


Más é an ceol bia an ghrá

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: (Jerott only), Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Chapter 1 is largely, Chapter 2 is much more mixed in terms of, Cigarettes, Drunk Sex, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hotel Sex, House Party, M/M, Mention of Eating Disorders, One Night Stands, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Tom and Salablanca are there too but they don't have very big roles, the band Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: If music be the food of love...The Band AU: Summer 1986 (post-PiF, pre-TRC)One unhappy marriage; one night in Dublin; too many mistakes to count.Jerott and Marthe have been invited to a friend's leaving party. At the last minute, Jerott decides he can't face the possibility of seeing Francis Crawford there: he chooses to stay in the hotel and drink his way through the mini-bar, leaving his wife to go to Oonagh O'Dwyer's party alone.--Chapter 1: Oonagh's party. Over the course of the evening, Marthe learns there's more to her relationship with Oonagh than she'd realised. The only mistakes here were made in the past.Chapter 2: Parallel timeline. Jerott goes in search of hotel bar booze, and gets a lot more than he bargained for.Both chapters are M, you can read one and not the other if you choose, the plots aren't interconnected beyond the setting.--Credit for the idea of Oonagh/Marthe goes toword_docs_and_willowboughswho is a genius. And huge thanks go to my beta,Erinaceina.
Relationships: Jerott Blyth/Marthe (Lymond Chronicles), Jerott Blyth/Original Male Character, Oonagh O'Dwyer/Marthe (Lymond Chronicles)
Kudos: 1
Collections: Lymond fics set in the Band/'80s AU





	1. Then my list'ning soul you move

**Author's Note:**

  * For [word_docs_and_willowboughs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/word_docs_and_willowboughs/gifts).



> The title is an Irish translation of 'if music be the food of love', and the chapter headings and verses at the start are also from [Purcell's lyrics](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/z-369-if-music-be-food-love-se-la-musica-%C3%A8-il-cibo-dellamore.html).
> 
>  **Note on names:**  
>  Khaireddin is Cai in the band AU and Kuzucuyum is Hamal (the Arabic version of 'lambkin', which is a name given to him by Kedi the social worker. In this AU Kedi is alive and well, she's just not in this fic). Kiaya Khatun is from Cyprus rather than Greece.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oonagh is moving to New Zealand for a new start. Before she goes, she's hosting a farewell party for a select group of friends. Marthe, who she has stayed in touch with since the nightmare of Graham Reid Mallet's ashram, arrives without her husband in tow, and the opportunity for some belated admissions arises.

_If music be the food of love,_ _  
_ _Sing on till I am fill’d with joy;_ _  
_ _For then my list’ning soul you move_ _  
_ _To pleasures that can never cloy._ _  
_ _Your eyes, your mien, your tongue declare_ _  
_ _That you are music ev’rywhere._

\--

"You made it!"

Oonagh's serious, fine-boned features glowed with uncharacteristic expressiveness. Framed in the doorway of her top-floor apartment, the summer sunset light catching amber and silver jewellery at her ears and throat, she beamed and actually threw her arms open to welcome the latecomer.

The embrace was stiff, unpractised, but the longer she held it the more she relaxed. Marthe laughed throatily against Oonagh's shoulder and stepped back, one hand maintaining a friendly touch on an arm covered by soft cashmere. "I'm sorry. Fashionably late, I guess?"

Oonagh shook her head. "Not at all. You're here. I'd feel bad for hauling everyone over, only I've got enough travelling coming up."

“Absolutely." Marthe stepped over the threshold onto bare polished wood. "You shouldn't feel bad - if your friends can't make the journey to Dublin, they haven't a hope of getting to New Zealand."

Oonagh snorted with mirth, an unselfconscious, genuine sound. "That's half my thinking..." She was on her way to shutting the door behind Marthe when she paused and her eyebrows shot up questioningly.

"Wait, is it just you?"

Marthe was holding a bag weighed down with gifts, but she looked like she would have liked to fold her arms at the question. She answered tersely. "Yeah."

Oonagh surveyed her expression, closing the door and taking her arm with a conspiratorial nod to a room off to the side of the hallway. The sounds of other guests drifted along from a place further within the building, happy tones of murmuring laughter and cutlery on crockery. Inside the study, the noise was shut out firmly.

"You can put your coat there," Oonagh invited Marthe, gesturing at a sofa piled high with summer jackets and bags.

Marthe flung her belted jacket on top of the heap and looked at Oonagh with a cynical half-smile. "He's drunk. I left him in the hotel room."

Oonagh sighed. "For God's sake." She walked to the tall sash window and looked across to the canal, her arms held lightly across her chest, elbows cradled in bare, perfectly manicured hands. She glanced at Marthe with anger in her green eyes. "He needn't have troubled himself. Francis isn't coming."

"What?"

Oonagh's laugh was a stifled thing, bitter and just as genuine as her snort of amusement had been. "Nope! He's working. Can't make it back until after we've gone. He's known about the move for months! But that bloody Cypriot's got him on a leash as tight as -" She looked again at Marthe, her eyes now wide. Her olive skin hid the blush well, but Marthe saw it, even against the honeyed glow from the light outside.

Marthe shrugged. "They deserve each other, then; let's leave it at that."

The other woman's shoulders relaxed a little at Marthe's reassurance, and they smiled in a moment's rueful silence.

Marthe approached the window to lean against the wall by Oonagh, gazing out with hooded blue eyes, her expression easy in its natural inclination to haughtiness. She had dressed up for the occasion too, following fashions Oonagh had never previously seen on her: bronze eyeshadow drifted up towards her brows, and around her eyes it blended seamlessly with thick, smoky liner. Pink blush accentuated her razor-sharp cheekbones and declined to clash with her carefully matched lipstick. Oonagh smiled at this: Marthe had too much taste to really go all in on present trends. Her unpierced ears made this clear, as did the natural shine of her unstyled hair.

"It's such a nice view though," Marthe murmured. The Grand Canal sparkled beneath green-boughed trees and city pigeons chuckled and cooed among the verdant light.

Oonagh shrugged. "It's fine. I'll find a new one."

Marthe eyed her, sizing up the other woman's decisive tone. Oonagh often had the manner of a person who would jump before anyone could push her - or offer assistance. But not now: her expression was relaxed, her shoulders at ease. The model's severe lines had been softened by love and care and restful nights, pressing flawless skin into characterful beauty, worn as proudly as the few threads of white in her black hair.

The earlier topic of conversation still lay heavy in the air until Oonagh turned a confident smile on Marthe. "And you know what? We'll have a better time without them!"

Shedding their disappointments and leaving them behind with the coats, they joined the party.

Oonagh's flat was on a single floor of a Georgian terrace, high-ceilinged and wooden-floored. Noise echoed and swelled in its lofty spaces, gathering to even greater peaks in rooms that had been stripped of furnishings and wall-hangings. It had the feeling of a very chic, well-maintained student bedsit in its present barren state: a place where seating for friends and glasses for carousing were all that were deemed necessary. Neatly taped cardboard boxes were stationed in corners, each one labelled in tidy, looping script.

Among the boxes, adorning two low sofas and a few scattered chairs, the crowd in the large, open plan sitting room was a select group. Marthe recognised only a handful of them. There was Salablanca, the Algerian mandole player; Lymond's drummer, Archie; and the girl Philippa, who sat on the floor occupied with entertaining two blonde toddlers.

Salablanca appeared to have found a rapport with Oonagh's friends from her modelling years: when he glanced up to nod at Marthe, his smile was as bright and full of charm as those clustered around him. He sat within a group of long-legged women on a sofa draped with colourful cloth, and they compared notes on their careers, their talk punctuated by bubbling laughter.

To Marthe's surprise, there was also a handful of red-clothed sannyasins standing by the dining table, picking at immaculately shaped cocktail-stick canapés as they talked. Oonagh saw her expression and snorted another laugh. "It wasn't all bad," she said, and Marthe's mouth twisted into a tolerant smirk: let Oonagh reclaim what she could of those months in the ashram.

Seated at a coffee table on the other side of the room, Archie was involved in an intense discussion with a smart-looking couple in their late twenties, who were introduced as the Erskines.

"I knew them in Berlin," Oonagh said allusively.

Finally, Marthe only had a moment to scrutinise the children: they were similar in size, one fairer than the other, and Philippa mediated their interactions, watching their shifting expressions as the most high-demand toy was driven around the carpet, hoarded in small, sticky hands, and shared under duress.

Once she saw Marthe, though, Philippa was on her feet with instant effect. Standing, she was very obviously not the child she had seemed from her seat on the floor, but still she flung her arms around Marthe with a familiar, friendly lack of inhibition. Marthe did not manage to respond with the composure Oonagh had shown when confronted with her own embrace, and she achieved little more than a fluttering pat on Philippa's shoulder before the girl pulled away.

"It's really good to see you," Philippa's words were so tender, so genuine, and Marthe blinked at her in confusion.

"It's just me," she said pre-emptively, but Philippa smiled and did not pursue the topic.

Instead she tucked her thick brown hair behind her ear and glanced down at the boys. "Hamal? Do you remember Marthe?"

The child looked up with rounded blue eyes, a corner of a red plastic truck wedged into his mouth. Marthe smiled thinly and waved down at him. As Hamal, who had been nicknamed Kuzúm in the ashram, chewed thoughtfully, the other boy took advantage of his distraction and reached out to grab at the truck. The plastic knocked against Hamal's gums and he shrieked, which made Cai yell out too, and Oonagh crouched down to wrestle her son's hands off the slimy plastic toy.

"Cai O'Dwyer, _chuir sin s_ _íos_ ," she snapped.

Philippa also dropped to her knees again and Marthe was left isolated in the middle of the room, feeling like a game bird that had forgotten to duck the hunter's gun.

Cai objected: " _Is liomsa_ _é_ _!_ "

"And you can let Hal play with it for a moment," Oonagh said reasonably.

Philippa was occupied in persuading Hamal that a little bruising to the gums wasn't really such a bad thing, and for a moment four voices overlapped, streaming together: soothing female tones and the breathless, sullen complaints of the boys.

Marthe caught the eye of Mrs Erskine observing her across the room and knew how awkward she looked, standing there knee-deep in domesticity. She half-turned, looking for the kitchen, or somewhere to put down the heavy bag of gifts, and found Archie at her shoulder, a glass of something clear and fizzy held out to her.

"Sparkling water, ma’am." He raised his brows and gave her a knowing look.

Marthe took the glass. "Piss off, Archie." She reddened and clamped her lips shut, but neither of the impressionable young minds at her feet seemed to have noticed.

Archie grinned. "Good travels?"

"Too much for some," she said flatly, satisfied by the quiet look of understanding on Archie's face. If he was also disappointed in her or in Jerott, he kept that part to himself and slouched back to his seat near the Erskines.

Marthe sipped the dry champagne sparingly as Oonagh rose again to her eye-level, Cai held in her arms. He was quite a bundle now, long-limbed and smartly dressed in a short-sleeved polo shirt and gingham shorts. In one hand he held the yellow twin to the truck that had been in Hamal's mouth, but he glared down at the other boy with a vengeful line to his mouth.

"Jesus I've seen that expression before," Marthe couldn't help but comment.

Oonagh leaned her head back to peer at Cai's scowl and agreed. "Ah yes. When we want something, we look a lot like our father." She met Marthe's eyes, a playful smirk on the edges of her features. "He looks like me when he's happy. Not that you'd know - no one ever sees either of us happy."

At that, Marthe laughed, and admired the genuine pleasure in Oonagh's reserved expression.

Finally, with Oonagh settled regally in a wing-backed chair, Cai sulking in her lap and Marthe perched on the right arm of the seat, the bag of presents was unpacked. Party contributions out of the way, Oonagh turned the first packaged object over in her hands and looked up at Marthe with a sceptical, wondering expression.

"Did you wrap this?"

Marthe's perfectly arched brows rose. "Dream on! I was just going to throw it all in the bag." For someone who took such poor care of himself, at least her husband remained a stickler for neatness in the details.

Oonagh snorted and stuck a pristine thumbnail under the edge of the paper. With ruthless glee, she helped Cai pull the wrapping off to reveal a handheld console, one of the coveted new Game & Watch releases. Two sets of headphones, a travel pillow, blankets, bag organisers and bottles of essential oils followed: all things intended to make a thirty-hour journey with a three-year-old as manageable as possible.

She smiled up at Marthe, a knowing warmth in her eyes. "Thank you, it's very thoughtful." Oonagh pried the console from Cai's curious grip - "We're saving that for the journey" - and picked up her own glass to clink it against Marthe's.

"I expect a Southern Hemisphere tour within the year."

"Of course.” Marthe inclined her head.

Marthe had been in the possession of the hostess's undivided attention for a matter of moments, and then, casting a long-suffering eye-roll at her newest guest, Oonagh put her glass down, put her child down, and stood to straighten the creases of her astonishingly white cigarette trousers.

"Archie, would you keep him occupied for a moment while I put these away?" Oonagh gathered up the discarded wrapping paper and the bag of gifts - now presented as Marthe would have done, had she been left to her own devices.

She'd said so to him, too: "Why are you bothering? She's only going to rip that stuff off and throw it away." Weary dark eyes had glared up at her, an expression that was infuriating in its combination of pity and contempt.

"Of course I'm going to wrap them, you don't give someone a gift without wrapping it." The more seriously he took it, the more absurd Marthe found it, and she'd had to leave, unable to repress a mocking giggle as he bent his attention back to his careful work.

Recalling the scene made Marthe's shoulders crawl with discomfort. What a stupid thing to argue about. And if she'd offered to help, would he have been grateful and loving about it? No, she decided. He would have criticised the jagged lines she cut in the paper; she'd have stuck tape to the table's lacquered surface and damaged it. He wouldn't trust her with even such a simple, inessential task.

And now, Oonagh didn't look at or even ask Marthe to occupy Cai, and Marthe couldn't decide whether she was relieved at the other woman's understanding or stung because it seemed like another lack of trust. She didn't want to have to play with the children, but she hoped that Oonagh understood that she would have done, if asked.

Still, instead of volunteering her help, she picked her way across the room to a spare seat on a sofa and watched Archie descend to the carpet, taking to his hands and knees, his brown, bald head a thoroughly irresistible drum for Cai's small hands.

"Do the animal noises!" Hamal cast the red truck aside and, making his way to Archie, began to trundle a small plastic elephant over the patched leather back of Archie’s waistcoat.

With Hamal and Cai thus distracted, Philippa was free to join Marthe on the couch, though she only took her eyes off the toddlers with reluctance.

"Hmm?" Her brown eyes were ringed with fashionable kohl and her lashes were stained with the kind of neon blue mascara that only the under-twenties could get away with. Bold hoop earrings nestled in her dark hair, her zip-up turtleneck and Esprit leggings demonstrating a willingness to experiment with styles.

"I said," Marthe repeated patiently. "How did the tour go?"

Philippa blinked, revealing a trace of the avian dowdiness she'd had as a young teen. She glanced aside once, then made herself focus on Marthe. "Oh! It was nice. Thanks. Kate came with me and looked after Hamal. I think the vinyl's being pressed for the album this month."

"And you're writing the songs yourself?" Marthe pursued, noticing with frustration that half of the girl's attention would forever be on the children playing nearby.

"Mostly," Philippa said dreamily. "I've been a bit busy organising fundraisers this year."

Marthe, who had also spent her youth being 'a bit busy' with charities and activism, bristled at Philippa's complacent shrug. "You should concentrate on your own craft. There are plenty of schmoes who can organise things, but you have a voice and the only way people will hear it is if you work your ass off now and make them sit up and listen."

Philippa smiled. "It's not the voice they need to hear but the message. There's no point worrying about chart success if Thatcher gets back in next year - if we all die in a nuclear fireball, I don't think the charts will have much relevance."

"That's why you need to write hits that rich kids will buy," Marthe's expression was as sardonic as it ever was, but her accent strengthened with her feelings. "The Wobblies and the folkies and the old hippies are on your side already."

Philippa studied her, finally putting the full focus of her attention on Marthe's face and tone. "I don't think I could bring myself to sell out, not when others are doing all they can to make a difference." She finally responded, the look in her eyes unbearably, piercingly kind.

Marthe's laugh was dry as tinder. "Get independent first: make a difference later. If you won't help yourself out, how can you help others?"

The hand on which Philippa wore a cheap Vegas wedding ring clenched and her cheeks paled a little while her neck reddened above her collar. She blinked rapidly, but her voice maintained its light, friendly tone. "I don't think it has to work like that."

Marthe didn't push it; didn't everyone have to find out for themselves, the hard way? She just shook her head and drained her glass. She offered Philippa a refill, but the girl demurred and returned to playing with the boys once Marthe left for the table of bottles and canapés.

The pastel glow from the sash windows faded as the sun slipped below the rooftops of buildings across the street. Lights came on, a record player warmed the atmosphere as vinyl crackled and hits old and new underlay the talk of guests. Like a casual game of musical chairs, people rearranged themselves around the room, leaving in search of food or drink, drifting over to a new conversation, making certain they were by the record player when a B-side finished so they could pick the next LP.

She wouldn't admit to it, but it was Margaret Erskine who chose the ABBA album. Nothing rivalled it for effect: the live version of Dancing Queen started up and the room was united, oldest to youngest, supermodels to sannyasins and all in between. Philippa shimmied, holding Hamal's hands and succeeding in inviting Cai into their group. Salablanca and the women in red brought bright, flowing colours with their moves, hands gesturing high, hips swaying freely - Archie joined them with gusto and a surprising lack of innate rhythm for a drummer. The Erskines clung to each other like wartime sweethearts, her laughing with her forehead on his shoulder. Even the stilted dancing of Oonagh's model friends was enthusiastic in its own way, some of them clustering around Philippa and the toddlers on their spindly heels, one letting loose with the sannyasins, and one dancing with Oonagh, turning awkward, swaying circles, her elbows out.

Marthe sat on the couch, her knees together, hoping not to be noticed. She watched Oonagh's hair swish as she turned: lustrous, frothing like a cloud over the sharp lines of scapulae seen through mint green cashmere. Her earrings swayed with crazed energy against her jaw and neck, sparkling like Morse code, but no brighter than her smile. She threw her head back and laughed at something her partner said and then pressed her nose to her cheekbone and muttered something in her ear.

Watching, Marthe found herself transfixed. Her cheeks went cold at Oonagh's gesture and she felt an unfamiliar jab of discomfort below her sternum. The bodies of the dancers bumped awkwardly: knees, hips, cheeks. Marthe emptied her glass again. Her cheeks were hot. She considered getting a soft drink from the kitchen.

But her reprieve ended before she could move - the track changed and Marthe's glass was plucked from her hand. Oonagh and her friend - "This is Katie," she leaned over to say in pointed tones - dragged Marthe from the couch as Take a Chance on Me followed on. Oonagh's hand was chilly in Marthe's right hand; Katie's was hot in her left.

"I know you know the words," Oonagh told her, squeezing her fingers. For a moment Marthe felt like she was defying gravity as Oonagh's green eyes met hers. Then the hostess drifted from their circle and glided across the living room to join Salablanca and the sannyasin women.

Katie had full lips and a wide, white smile. Her hazel eyes were lined zealously with black powder and bold fluorescents filled the space up to her brows. She had short toffee-coloured hair fixed in waves over her forehead and red button earrings like gobstoppers on each side of her face. On the lapel of a designer jacket she had a pin with florid script reading 'Avenge Oscar Wilde', and she did not flinch from Marthe's cool-eyed assessment.

"Katie, are you from San Francisco?" Marthe asked, allowing Katie to dictate the movement of their arms, Marthe's hands held in hers, her steps pulled to and fro’ on the carpet around Katie's feet.

Katie laughed easily, her smile widening though her eyes remained fixed on Marthe's. "I've never heard it called that before," she said in a damning Mission Brogue.

"Mmm," Marthe replied, letting her expression lie somewhere between conspiracy and amused reticence. Katie winked; one heavily made-up lash flickering shut knowingly.

Oonagh was scrupulously ignoring them and would not turn to meet Marthe's eye as she danced some complex series of gestures with a group of the other models, who seemed to be teaching the moves to Salablanca, Archie and the sannyasins.

"New York?" Katie tilted her head and steered Marthe anti-clockwise to block her view of Oonagh.

"Bisexual, actually.” Marthe raised a brow, the rest of her expression cool. She flexed the hand with a wedding ring on it against Katie's fingers.

At least her expression made Katie laugh again: one of those West Coast sunbeams of joy, a terrifyingly loud sound to the unwary, but as warm as Tomales Bay.

Marthe consented to dance through the A side. When the record was turned, a little flushed from wine and movement, closeness of bodies and sticky palms, she sat down with an Orangina and the agreeable company of the model. Marthe twisted her hair up into a straggling bun and held the cool bottle of soft drink between her knees, enjoying the way the chilled glass made her skin prickle.

She felt no tremor of attraction, but neither did Katie. They had enough to compare and discuss, and in some ways it reminded Marthe that she did miss her homeland; that she'd left behind pieces that would never be picked up, and ambitions she had moved on from. Gesticulating and increasing in volume, bickering and cackling, they gave the hostess reason to smirk discreetly.

Oonagh watched it all as she moved from guest to guest, determined to maintain the atmosphere, determined that her party would endure - maybe determined that her friends would miss her bitterly after this reminder of all she could do and be for them. She barely sat down and picked only distractedly at the array of food - a cube of pineapple here, one of cheese there - as she paused to replenish bottles or murmur a suggestion to the person closest to the record player.

Cai was never out of her thoughts either, and she indulged the boy and reminded him what a treat it was to be up so late. He looked glutted on the attention of the guests, glassy eyed with pleasure: like a monarch after a feast, or a cat on a hearth. The resemblance only grew when Oonagh held him up to the departing sannyasins and they cooed and fussed his hair, stroked his cheeks and enveloped mother and son in red linen hugs.

It was the models who went next, and Katie stood to join them, casting another wink at Marthe, who waved as she departed.

Oonagh, in the midst of wishing them a successful night out on the town and marvelling that any had the energy to go on to clubs, hefted Cai in her arms and cast a questioning look at Marthe. She raised her brows and gestured with her head: _Do you want to go with them?_

Marthe smiled and mouthed: _God no._

Oonagh rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner that seemed to say: _There's no pleasing you_. But she might have been pleased, judging by the curl of her mouth. She handed Cai around the models and hugged each one tightly. Some made promises to see her in Christchurch soon, some were already in the hall calling back that the taxi was waiting. Grinning sheepishly among them was Archie, who had been adopted as agony aunt or accessory by a woman nearly a foot taller than him. He waved a hurried farewell to the party and allowed himself to be manhandled from the room. The group trickled out, leaving Oonagh to shut the door quietly and return, newly hesitant, to a subdued apartment.

Philippa slipped a more peaceful record onto the player and Oonagh deposited Cai with Hamal, who leaned on Margaret Erskine while she read to him. With a weary chuckle, Oonagh swept her black hair back and turned to the kitchen, muttering a rhetorical question about whether there were still enough bottles in the fridge.

The gathering remained quiet at the time Marthe found herself waylaid on her own trip to the kitchen in search of water. Down the dim-lit corridor, a bright light emerged from the bathroom and Oonagh peered around the door. "Come on, come here!" she hissed, gesturing urgently, a playful look in her eyes.

Marthe did as she was bid, joining Oonagh in the bathroom with her empty glass. Oonagh shut the door and locked it. The window was open and on the sill sat a matchbox and a packet of Player's. Oonagh perched on the wood and beckoned Marthe over with a nod of her head as she lit up.

She passed the packet and the matches to Marthe, who took a seat on the opposite side of the window. Their knees bumped in the cramped space.

"It's got the extractor fan," Oonagh pointed to the clattering plastic fitting on the wall. "Only place the bloody fire alarm doesn't catch me at it."

Marthe watched the flame at the end of the match flare and struggle through the lavender coils of smoke. It burned down quickly, and the cigarette bobbed in her lips as she tightened them to draw in the dry taste. Marthe let the hit of nicotine numb the feeling of the fire against her fingertips. The match went out.

"Congratulations," Oonagh said sardonically, watching her with narrowed eyes. "You have the pain threshold of the average teenage dosser."

Marthe flicked the twist of blackened wood out into the night. "Good party. Do you always hide in the bathroom at your own parties?"

Oonagh's jade eyes glittered below perfectly chiselled brows. "It just never feels like a party without a VIP lounge." Her lips curved and then parted in another easy laugh - she had laughed more that night than Marthe had ever seen her laugh before.

They smoked in silence, Marthe enjoying the ritual and the arrangements of lips, fingers and breath - even if she knew she'd regret it in the morning, when she would wake with her hair coated with sweet tar and the acrid smell of ash on her skin. It was such a sensuous activity, something she liked to perform in languid, luxurious slowness, snatching glimpses of Oonagh doing the same on the other side of the window, mirth in her eyes, cynicism curling her lips.

"What happened with Katie?"

Marthe's eyelids widened as she took a drag on her cigarette. "You were trying to set me up!"

"Of course. And what was wrong with my suggestion?"

"Well, it's just a small matter," Marthe flicked ash out of the window, staring as orange light pulsed in the end of the tobacco. "But as everyone seems so keen to remind me, I am married." She glanced up. "To a man, no less."

Marthe launched the dead butt out into the night as well and picked up a fresh match, pretending to be suddenly very interested in its grain.

Scrutinising her in silence, her limbs crossed over her body, a pristine crease of doubt between her brows, Oonagh sighed. Finally, not bothering to hide the exasperation in her voice, she asked: "Why did you do it, Marthe? When Francis Crawford, universal trendsetter, says 'jump', why, for the love of God, do all the otherwise sane people fling themselves into marriage?"

Marthe looked down at the match in her hold and rolled it between her two thumbs and forefingers, mimicking rolling a strip of tobacco, focussing on keeping her hands occupied. "A bunch of reasons, really."

She glanced up, a glint of blue, her mouth twisting in acknowledgement of Oonagh's contemptuous scoff. "None of them to do with Francis," she added, though it didn't reassure Oonagh.

"Jerott Blyth is a disaster. Were you so upset about Kiaya?"

This time the look in Marthe's eyes was a warning, but Oonagh doubled down, her arms folded, jaw sharp and defiant.

"That was nothing. Just a fling." Marthe studied the match again, her eyes prickling unaccountably, her throat tight with frustration. Her eyebrows rose as she blinked quickly, suddenly, and let the words she was about to speak roll around her head. Even there they seemed pathetic: a plaintive excuse to justify a cruel decision.

"He loves me."

Oonagh's hands tightened on her biceps and nausea crossed her expression. "God! You could just have gotten a puppy."

Marthe, surprised at herself, let out a yelp of laughter. Her skin felt hot and she was very conscious of her knee against Oonagh's, her skin bare below the line of her wide-legged shorts; Oonagh's beneath summery cotton.

"Puppy doesn't come with a recording studio and a European passport," Marthe observed, though there was no pride in her voice when she admitted it.

The reply was a low, conspiratorial "hmm" of understanding. Oonagh knew how lucky she was that her 'daft wee poses' (as Cormac O'Connor had called them) had given her the means to live independently - once she had disentangled her self-esteem from his approval, at least. She shuddered to think of how easily it could all have been lost, of how willingly she would have married him at one time, if he had only thought to ask.

Meanwhile Marthe, a prodigiously talented musician and debt-ridden postgraduate student, had not found her twenties as lucrative as Oonagh had. The only relative she admitted to was the senile old music journalist she cared for at home, though the whole world had a theory about her family connection to Francis Crawford.

Oonagh offered her another cigarette and Marthe refused with a small shake of her head.

She blinked and seemed to slough off some sad thought and smiled as Oonagh lit up. "What _are_ you doing in here?"

With a sidelong glance at the door, Oonagh considered her response. Finally, she picked up the open carton of cigarettes and shook it.

"I've mostly given up. It's a crutch and I don't like it. I don't want to need it anymore." Her lips moved in a smirk, the same colour as the carmine collar her mouth left on the cigarette filter. "But you can't just kick a man's crutch away and expect him to walk. Or so my therapist tells me. So, I've been saving this packet for the journey. Only, I found I needed to open it tonight."

Marthe leaned back against the uncomfortable ridges of the windowsill. She let an encouraging curiosity rest on her expression but did not push matters.

"I'm fucking terrified, Marthe." Oonagh gave an awkward little cough of laughter. "I went to New Zealand once, for a job - I was seventeen. I just picked the place that was furthest away from..." Her long fingers circled vaguely in the air, with the cigarette swirling a trail of smoke behind. "You know."

"It's a good idea. A clean break," Marthe reassured her in the way she was certain Oonagh wanted to hear. On this decision she knew she had to be no more than a passive observer, an interpreter of the celestial course that Oonagh was set upon.

"You don't think I'm a terrible mother? Denying my son the right to see his father?" One black brow raised, a practiced challenge to any objections.

Marthe blinked, her arms folded loosely in her lap. "I think he's doing a pretty good job of that himself, isn't he?"

Oonagh gave her distinctive snort of laughter. "Bastard," she said, looking out into the darkness over the canal. "Though he's a wonder when he's here, of course - the model of charm!"

"Actually, I will have another," Marthe sighed and helped herself to a cigarette from the packet in Oonagh's hand, fumbling against the other woman's fingers to work her way into the foil and wheedle one free.

Leaning towards her made their knees press together again and Oonagh watched Marthe's carefully guarded expression, extending her own leg a little as the other woman sat back, so that the touch between limbs was maintained. It felt like an anchor. Marthe was neither surprised nor perturbed by anything Oonagh had told her - ever. There was a steadiness to her gaze and a stubborn strength about her that Oonagh cherished and, she had realised belatedly, would sorely miss.

"I hope you didn't mind about Katie," Oonagh stared at the way the light from the cigarette glittered on Marthe's eyes: fire on water. "You just looked so uncomfortable. Lonely."

Marthe tossed her head, and as extravagantly nonchalant as she often seemed, Oonagh saw the muscles of her white throat move and tighten. The corner of her lips moved, a smile or a sneer burgeoning.

"It's not that I thought it doesn't count if it's with a woman, or any of that bullshit...You know. You know I know.” Oonagh said meaningfully. “Katie's just fun. I thought you might have some fun with her."

Marthe finally decided to turn a smile on her: it was of such pristine, honest pleasure that Oonagh saw immediately the features she shared with Francis Crawford, those same features that came through in Cai. The sharpness of her looks softened behind rounded cheeks, the corners of her heavy lids creased in sweet amusement, and her lips were an immaculate cupid's bow, balanced by rarely seen dimples.

It made Oonagh's chest clench possessively, and no efforts to draw soothing smoke into her lungs diffused the feeling. Looking at Marthe was like trying to get a good glimpse of the sun during an eclipse, and this expression revealed the radiance that was usually hidden.

"She is fun. She's just not my type."

Oonagh guffawed in relief. "You prefer them tall, dark and handsome."

Letting her glance dance away from the sun, Oonagh missed the way Marthe's teeth clamped down briefly on her lower lip, the flush of blood in her cheeks. Oonagh's eyes raised self-deprecatingly when she laughed, and her earrings fell back into the pillow of her black hair; her matte red lipstick glowed in contrast with burnished, olive skin.

"Something like that," Marthe said softly. She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette on the outer wall beneath the sill and squeezed Oonagh's knee as she stood. "Come on. What if other people want to piss?"

Oonagh's eyes widened at the suggestion and as she inhaled a last, longing lungful of smoke. She stuffed the opened packet and the matches on top of the medicine cabinet and fussed once more with her trousers: still white, still barely creased at all, except by design. "Thank you.” She gripped Marthe's fingers briefly and then opened the door and peered out into the dark hallway.

In the living room a Peter Gabriel record was playing, and it was overlaid with the sounds of crockery being stacked and arranged in the kitchen.

"Stop that!" Oonagh pounced upon the noisy activity. She shook her head at Tom Erskine, who looked up sheepishly from the sink, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows and tie tucked in. Margaret stood next to him, drying the clean items while Salablanca arranged them in neat stacks on the side.

"Stop!" Oonagh implored.

Salablanca grinned, whisking a plate away from her grasp and holding it up above his already tall frame. Oonagh was not short herself, but she had no chance of retrieving it from him. "Sorry, Al'ayrelanda - nothing for you to do here. Go and sit down. Relax."

Margaret nodded at Marthe, who wrapped her hands gently around Oonagh's biceps and guided her back out of the kitchen, across the hallway to the sitting room. "I'll - I'll never invite you back here again," Oonagh wagged a finger. "Worst guests I've ever had!"

She was returned to her seat of honour, handed a glass of wine, and presented with homemade cake one of the sannyasins had brought. She didn't touch either at first, stuck fretting about the group in the kitchen.

Marthe endured this for a little while, and then rolled her eyes at Philippa, whose response was a weary smile between yawns. She was sprawled on the couch with Hamal asleep on her knees, waiting for permission to leave. Cai, making the most of the late hour, ran up and down the hallway holding his red truck aloft, triumphant.

“Enough, hostess with the mostes’.” Marthe stood and Oonagh looked up at her with a plaintive expression.

After a brief detour to the kitchen to get a fork - minding not to trip over Cai as he stomped past - Marthe strode purposefully back to Oonagh.

“Don’t you see,” Marthe sat on the arm of her chair as she had done earlier. “You just have such good taste in guests that they can’t imagine leaving you to do all the cleaning up yourself.”

As she spoke, she picked up Oonagh’s untouched plate and jabbed the fork into the cake, helping herself to a corner of icing.

Oonagh’s expression wavered between amusement and indignation. “What are you doing?”

Marthe shrugged. “It’s good cake. I’m helping you tidy up.”

“Stop that!” Oonagh repeated, laughing as realisation lit up her features.

Marthe shook her head, her mouth full of cake, but she proffered the plate to Oonagh, who picked up her own fork in acceptance of the challenge.

“Fine.” She speared a corner of icing for herself and pulled it from the fork with her teeth, wrapping red lips closed as she chewed.

Marthe raised her brows and gestured at Oonagh’s blissful expression. “See? It’s good cake.”

Contemplating the flavour of her second bite, Oonagh mock-glared up at Marthe’s satisfied smirk. “Of course. You think with my taste in guests I’d invite any makers of bad cake?”

“Well, shit.” Marthe put her fork down and made to stand.

Oonagh grabbed her bare knee, balancing her plate precariously on her own white-clad thighs, her fork in her other hand, a crumb of chocolate at the edge of her mouth and a hungry expression in her eyes. “You bring other qualities, _mo leann_ _án_.”

Marthe let her act drop and gave Oonagh a warm smile. The affectionate term - the meaning of which Marthe had never enquired - immediately recalled to Marthe the splinter of a woman she had first met washing pots in a Nevada ashram. Oonagh had been held together by bitterness and well-worn habits of endurance, and only slowly, through what Marthe might honestly have termed half-assed, hopeless efforts - that to Oonagh were disarmingly genuine - a witty, determined woman had emerged.

When her retreat from life with Cormac had turned into a new kind of nightmarish imprisonment, Oonagh had burrowed into familiar coping mechanisms. Used to grasping at autonomy in slivers and slices, she had taken control of her constrained existence in the ashram in the only way she had known how: she counted every lentil and every sprout of alfalfa that passed her lips. It was a strange way of survival that flickered into life again as soon as she felt her authority wavering, and Marthe had seen Oonagh's confident facade wear thin through the night.

 _Mo leannán_ , Oonagh had taken to calling her when she knew Marthe chose to work in the kitchens to be near her, to bring news of her son, who was kept on the other side of the commune, to let her know that there were friends there who were working out ways to get her and Cai away from the influence of Graham Reid Mallet and his vendetta against Francis Crawford. In between all this, Marthe visited her just to remind her that she was right to be angry, right not to be trusting, and Oonagh’s anger had slipped away when she was with Marthe, her reserves of trust slowly regathering.  
  


Somewhat willfully, Marthe had misheard the Irish term of endearment and in return called Oonagh: "My Ono." She did so again now, and Oonagh laughed and managed to eat another corner of cake.

The others came through from the kitchen, their gleaming work stacked neatly on the counters, ready for bubble-wrap and packing. The tension left Oonagh's shoulders as they sat themselves down for a final drink.

The album spun to a close and Tom Erskine stifled a yawn. "We're giving Philippa and Hal a lift back to the hotel, and I guess Archie’ll not be needing his seat. Does anyone else want to hop in the car?"

Salablanca shrugged and cast an open-palmed invitation at Marthe.

She opened her mouth and saw a strange expression on Oonagh’s face. The hostess hid it with a hasty sip of wine, but two points of heat stained her cheeks and her brows were uneven with troubles. Marthe might almost have called it panic.

Speaking softly, though her heart hammered with an urgent and unfamiliar need to reassure, Marthe demurred. "My hotel's just the other end of this street.” She shook her head. "I can get back okay."

The process of leaving began its cycle again. Regrets and hopes and wishes for safe journeys and swift reunions warmed the air. Marthe was even swept up in another of Philippa's generous embraces, with Hamal held between them, the boy staring at Marthe with a serious frown.

There were promises to catch up, collaborations mooted that would never happen, quiet words of advice spoken between Margaret and Oonagh, Tom's firm handshake and Salablanca's all-encompassing smile. Oonagh went with them to the door, captured Cai in her arms, and left Marthe again stranded in the centre of the sitting room.

So little trace of the gathering remained: a few scattered crisp shards under the table, toys and a splayed board-book on the floor, and creases and untidy folds scored across the colourful throws on the sofas. Just the empty glasses of those who were leaving, sticky from lips and sweet liquid, and Oonagh's picked-at plate of cake. Empty glasses, empty seats, empty shelves. The furniture, records and toys were the only unpacked touches of life remaining in the room.

Looking around, Marthe thought it would be a melancholy place to be alone, systematically putting away the traces of friendship: washing smiles clean from glassware, shaking out the body shapes that were imprinted on the throws and cushions.

She bent as if to pick up and tidy the scattered toys, but Oonagh returned in a rush, the apartment door still open, Cai held before her, proffered like a sack of spuds. "My aunt's coming! Jesus already! She's taking Cai for the night and I need to finish getting his bag together."

Marthe had no choice but to accept what she was handed and watch Oonagh dash down the hall, scurrying between bedrooms and bathroom, muttering as she went: "Pyjamas...clothes...toothbrush...should have done your teeth already, boyo, Auntie Rosaleen is going to pitch a fit..."

Cai squirmed in Marthe's hold, trying to turn the uppermost part of his body a full one hundred and eighty degrees, following the sounds of his mother's voice. Marthe felt his small chest inflate, a power in her hands that she was suddenly very aware of. She spun him in a little twirl, raising him in the hope of catching his attention.

"Hey, Cai!"

His hot, tacky grip was on her wrist, trying to free himself from this thing that interfered with his own priorities. Blond brows angled and the long mouth crumpled against dimpled cheeks and chin. "No..." he whined in the tone of voice that made babysitters' blood run cold.

Marthe grimaced. She could still hear Oonagh chuntering in the other room, and this was the sound that Cai longed to go to. All right: a distraction, she thought, and began to hum.

When Oonagh returned with an overstuffed blue duffel bag, the sight that greeted her made her heart leap to her throat and her skin fizz with heat.

Marthe had her back to her, blonde streaks of hair trickling carelessly free of her scrunchie. The cupid tattooed on her neck smiled demurely from behind this golden curtain and the features of her back stood prominent beneath the thin white tank top she wore. On one of the pale hills of her shoulders rested a small head with curls a little frostier than hers. Cai's feet dangled free over her right arm, and, as Oonagh approached, she saw that the boy's eyes were closed and his thumb was tucked contentedly in his mouth. Marthe swayed a little, her head turned to the boy's face as she sang:

" _When times get rough,_

_You can fall back on us,_

_Don't give up,_

_Please don't give up_."

Marthe looked up and smiled at Oonagh's approach.

 _I think he's asleep?_ She mouthed.

Oonagh nodded, wide-eyed, and lay a wondering hand on her son's forehead.

 _Miracle-worker_ , she mouthed back.

One of them grinned and the other lit up with a matching expression, and Oonagh let the wave of gratitude nudge her closer, wrapping her arms around Marthe and Cai and resting her head against the sweeping line of the other woman's shoulder and neck. Marthe leaned her cheek into Oonagh's hair and continued to sing as the small party swayed together.

"You're not walking down Baggot Street on your own, you know."

"I'm not?"

“No." Oonagh nuzzled against the shape of Marthe's body.

“But you’ll finally have the place to yourself,” Marthe said tentatively. Maybe Oonagh had been looking forward to that quiet ritual, to packing away friendships alongside crockery.

Oonagh smiled and Marthe felt it against her collarbone.

"I know. Finally. All to myself. To do with as I wish."

Oonagh's fingertips ran in small circles over the skin of Marthe's arms, and Marthe wondered if the other woman could feel the thunder inside her chest, the pinpricks of goose flesh on her arms, the way her ribcage struggled to contain her quickened breath. Trying to work out how to ask Oonagh if she meant what Marthe had begun to let herself believe was meant, she rearranged her chin against Oonagh's head thoughtfully.

The new angle was enough to show her the small figure waiting in the hallway, a still and silent portent that only deigned to clear its throat in announcement when Marthe's eyes widened.

Marthe expected Oonagh to flinch and draw back, but she only raised her head at her own pace. She released Marthe reluctantly and turned with a weary smile.

"Auntie Rosaleen," Oonagh transferred the embrace to a tiny, bird-like woman in dark knitwear, who adjusted glasses worn on a glittering chain and peered thoughtfully at Oonagh when released.

"He's ready for bed. Well, he hasn't done his teeth. But he's very tired."

"I should think so: a child awake at this time," the old woman fussed quietly, but though her face was inscrutable to Marthe, her voice sounded kind and not judgemental.

Rosaleen examined Marthe, her eyes dark and big behind thick lenses, her silver hair cropped short at the sides of her jowly face. "Are you one of the models, then?"

Marthe raised her brows. "Oh, that's sweet of you. No, I'm just wearing high heels," she pivoted a leg and Rosaleen swallowed silently at the extent of bare skin.

"American," she observed, looking at Oonagh.

"Marthe helped me out, Auntie. She found me in the ashram and she made sure Cai was safe. She's a good friend." On this last word, Oonagh's eyes roved over Marthe's face with ambition that seemed to belie what she said.

The hanging skin on Rosaleen's throat moved again and she blinked behind her glasses. "Well you know I think it's good for you. Women...you need good women in your life, Oonagh. Not like that horrible man."

"I quite agree," Oonagh said softly, her hands on Rosaleen's shoulders, standing behind her to look at Marthe with a flush of excitement showing on her face.

Rosaleen bowed her head to check Oonagh had packed Cai's overnight bag correctly. Mumbling around loose-fitting false teeth, she allowed the women to overhear her other thoughts: "Well and a very nice voice she has, too."

Oonagh flashed a grin at Marthe. Marthe turned pink, wondering how long the woman had been in the apartment, waiting to be noticed.

Cai was little interested in waking or being cooed over by that point and allowed Marthe to pass him silently to Rosaleen. "Do you want me to carry him?" Marthe asked.

The tiny woman hurled the duffel bag over her other shoulder and gripped Cai against her hip while Oonagh brushed his hair and murmured good wishes in his ear, leaving kisses over his brow and cheeks.

"No, thank you," the reply was decisive. Her arthritic hands were unwavering, one on the boy's thigh, another on the strap of the duffel bag. "Oonagh, you just telephone tomorrow."

She waited for the agreement from her niece and then turned, taking short, quick strides to the stairwell.

Marthe shook her head. "She's barely twice the size of him! Will she manage?"

"She's made of tough stuff," Oonagh murmured, staring down the corridor for a moment as Rosaleen's steps retreated.

The quietude of the night reared up to fill the space between her heavy, careful tread on the stairs. Marthe found herself holding her breath, waiting until Rosaleen could no longer be heard, weighing up her choices. Confident of what she was and what she wanted, Marthe was quite accustomed to making offers and being rebuffed as often as she was accepted - but never by a friend. The fear of spoiling things hung too heavy between friends, gestures seemed muddied and confused by other kinds of intimacy. On the other hand, Oonagh was about to move to the other side of the world - if it went wrong, what consequences would there be? Marthe hated the liquid feeling in her knees, the uncertainty of this wanting.

Oonagh, facing the door as she closed it again with a soft click, sighed. She bent her head against the wood, her fingers still gripping the handle, hair falling in glossy waves over her face.

The silence in the apartment was absolute: a gently buzzing thing, like unused electricity or a tide in a seashell. Marthe moved tentatively down the hallway. Was that anxiousness that was hidden behind the wall of Oonagh's hair - or was it the edge of a smile Marthe could see, something satisfied and proud, playful: an invitation to come closer?

Cat-like, Oonagh stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders to work out some tension, but she waited for Marthe to approach.

Marthe took a couple of strides to the door. Bracing for a shudder that never came, she put a hand on Oonagh's shoulder, gently massaging the taut trapezoid muscle with the pressure of her thumb.

Instead of flinching, Oonagh's body rippled with a laugh of pleasure, and she lolled her head against the door, her eyes closed. It had definitely been a smile behind the falling hair, one that now stretched wide and languid at Marthe's touch. "Rosaleen was taking Cai so I had space to clean up after the party. But that's been done for me! What am I to do now in this empty place?"

Adrenaline made Marthe's heart thump with a simple answer. That overflow of chemistry that had been absent when she danced with Katie rose up in her core, and she lifted her touch from Oonagh's shoulder and swept aside the draping black hair, scooping and gathering it behind Oonagh's ear. Marthe's fingertips lingered against the hot cartilage, swirling down to the earlobe and stroking the length of Oonagh's restless, glittering earring between middle and forefinger.

Oonagh smiled and kept her eyes closed. "You don't want a cup of tea before bed?"

Moving closer, heat burning a line up through her centre, Marthe dipped her touch deeper into Oonagh's hair, probing the thicket of curls at the back of her skull, feeling the shape of her neck and the soft, new hairs close to her scalp.

"I can't have caffeine before bed," Marthe murmured. "Keeps me awake all night."

Oonagh opened her eyes briefly to confirm what she wanted, and two laughing splinters of green caught Marthe's blue just as their lips met. Oonagh released the door handle and twisted to face her, dropping eager hands to Marthe's hips.

She was lightly perfumed, her skin touched with rosemary and citrus; something floral and spicy that made Marthe inhale deeply. Marthe's hand stayed in her hair, fingers massaging the hidden contours at the base of her skull, the touch of her other hand still restrained, questing lightly around the waistband of Oonagh's trousers.

There was no timidity in Oonagh's response, just a laughing giddiness. She simmered with pleasure: a glee that had been unleashed when she first broke free of Cormac, when she thought she'd found her place with the sannyasins - put on hold when Marthe had first met her - but untrammelled now, a wellspring of joy that had been deeply buried, contained through years of abuse, through serious work and serious politics, and that now gushed forth with a power that defied lost time. Oonagh's hands fluttered restlessly from Marthe's hips, around her waist, over her bare arms and up to cup her chin. She pushed back against the door, coming out of her slouch to remind Marthe she was taller, leaning down into the kiss now, her lips and tongue moving in rhythm with Marthe's, matching her, responding to her.

Marthe gasped as they parted, hot breath tickling the fine hairs on her skin, her body held just separate from Oonagh's, just one small step or a shift in balance from the rolling surface of Oonagh's cashmere top.

"Come here, come here," Oonagh said, the words catching on a gravelly base of emotion that drove Marthe wild.

She pressed herself into the other woman's body, arms encircling, hips to hips, feeling the curve and heat of Oonagh's breasts against her own. Unable to catch and control it, a whimper of longing slipped out between Marthe's lips and her cheeks reddened with heat, her skin prickled, on edge in the effort to pick up every sensation.

The sound she made caused Oonagh to laugh again, a chuckle deep in her throat. Marthe pulled back to kiss the vibrations at her jugular notch, murmuring: "What's so funny?"

She didn't let Oonagh answer, covering red lipstick with pink again and sending wandering hands over smooth cotton trousers, pulling Oonagh away from the door, closer, giggling, biting her own lips and then Marthe's.

Oonagh let herself be peeled away from the surface. Her fingers danced teasingly over Marthe's shoulders and down, barely touching the thin fabric of her tank top, the space between filled with the imagination of touch, like static electricity. One step at a time, knees knocking, pushing legs aside, they made it as far as the couch and Marthe let herself sink down, collapsing back against the bright rumpled fabric with Oonagh tangled in her arms, her hands under the hem of Marthe's top, Marthe's hands submerged below her cotton waistband and cashmere.

Marthe lifted a leg and extended it to rest across Oonagh's thigh and hip. The other woman caught it with her nearest hand, extending her fingers to broaden the surface of touch, beginning over at the plump curve of Marthe's calf and sweeping across the peak of her bare knee and up the lower part of her thigh. Oonagh's fingertips snuck below the edges of Marthe's loose shorts, taunting the sensitive, hidden skin there, caressing the fine blonde hairs on her leg, squeezing strong muscle and soft flesh.

“Jesus,” Marthe laughed into Oonagh’s mouth.

Oonagh’s expression when she pulled back was guileless. She fluttered her eyelashes, the attempt to look both poised and innocent undermined by the red cloud of smudged lipstick around her mouth. The sight made Marthe laugh harder.

“What?” Oonagh laughed as well. “What? Did I do something wrong? Are you just really ticklish?” She slid her hand under the hem of Marthe’s shorts again, fingers playing over the surface of her thigh.

Marthe bit her lip and kissed her again. “No, nothing wrong. I –” Oonagh cut her off in a return of her kiss. “Just – had – no – idea you wanted this.”

" _A lheann_ _án_ ," Oonagh purred, untangling the scrunchie from Marthe's hair and running fingers deep into the loosened blonde waves. "What do you think I've been calling you all this time?"

Marthe let herself be guided to sit astride Oonagh's lap, now looking down on her, nose to nose. "More popular than Jesus?"

Oonagh snorted. "Not quite. It means 'lover'."

"You've been calling me your lover since the ashram?" Marthe's voice exploded with disbelief, Oonagh's hands tight and steadying around her waist.

"Sure it's fine, no one speaks a word of Irish these days.” Oonagh grinned and pulled Marthe down for another kiss.

Dazed, Marthe recalled the discussion of former lovers – men and women – they had shared over the sink late one evening. "Well then I have time to make up for."

Marthe's hands shimmied beneath Oonagh's cashmere and up warm skin that was softer than the fabric that covered it, feeling Oonagh's ribcage move with quickened breath. The top came up and over her head, trailing a cascade of wild black curls and glittering, disturbed jewellery. Marthe flung it aside and pressed her mouth to Oonagh's, kissed away the last taste of chocolate and wine on Oonagh's tongue, ran her hands around the textured band at the bottom of Oonagh's bra, tracing the lines of underwires around each breast, thumbs flickering up and over the satin and the lace through which she felt the response of Oonagh's body hardening, rising to the touch.

"I think," said Oonagh breathily, her grip on Marthe's waist tightening, her body pushing against Marthe's touch, "that lost time deserves a bed, at least?"

With lingering kisses, Marthe slid from her lap and extended a hand. "Lead on.” She pulled Oonagh from the couch with an ease of strength that set Oonagh's heart running fast.

They left behind the party ghosts and the last bits of tidying, slipping into hallway shadows, losing shoes and Marthe's tank top as they went, submerged within the shadowed embrace of the bedroom. It smelled of fresh linen and lavender, of Oonagh's perfume and the blooms of lilac that tumbled over the edges of a glass vase on the chest of drawers. The walls were soft grey-blue, like the sea Marthe had crossed to be there, and they plunged into the waves of sheets coloured like eggshells.

Black hair and blonde spread like halos of kelp over the bedclothes. Marthe sought out all of Oonagh's edges and her textures, rolling the hot metal and amber of her pendant over the surface of her chest, comparing satin with soft skin, tracing the imprint of cloth on flesh beneath the edges of waistbands and bra. Oonagh's expeditions were no less curious, though Marthe had been customarily without a bra beneath her tank top, and so no lace interfered with the cool fingers that drew shapes around her breasts, teased pink nipples to harden, the arm that reached around Marthe's back to bring her close, the hand twirling and smoothing Marthe's long blonde hair against her bare back.

Oonagh's pristine trousers, showing a little more wear than they had earlier, were discarded thoughtlessly and slithered from the foot of the bed. She pulled her earrings free and laid them aside as Marthe worked her own shorts off. Nothing now kept skin from hot skin, two soft bodies pressed together and entwined, and Marthe felt like a furnace as she lay above Oonagh, her senses filled with rosemary and the heady, waxy scent of lipstick.

Oonagh did not need to be told where to run her hands to make Marthe's skin shiver with gooseflesh and desire; she understood the effect caused by the pressure of her mouth against sensitive places; the power of not plunging headlong to a conclusion. Used for so long to submerging themselves in the business of others' pleasures, both women delighted in the discovery of something shared, and a comradeship in knowing precisely why what they did together was different. Why it was so much better.

By the morning, with her head nestled against Oonagh's shoulder, the complete immersion in the other woman was nearly enough to let Marthe ignore the lingering fingers of cigarette smoke in her hair. Greeted by mauve Sunday morning light, Marthe blinked in satisfied weariness. Her view was a rolling vista of Oonagh's bronze skin, her arm around the bottom of Oonagh's ribcage, fingers moving along her flank. Marthe's teeth and tongue had worked their way over that atoll, down the sleek side of that valley, too soft to leave marks. She was clothed in the reciprocation of Oonagh's touch too: her skin was coated with the sheen of kisses and bubbling laughter the other woman had offered up.

It ought to have been perfect: to drift between waking and sleeping, unhurried and untroubled, without demand or the intrusion of any needy questions hanging unanswered in the air. And it was so very nearly that. Marthe fought against rising consciousness, her brow furrowing as she made her eyes close against the will to wake. It proved a losing battle, and the skirling threads of frustration at the past and at the carefully mapped out future overshadowed the peace of the present.

Regret was not something Marthe allowed herself: regret was pointless in the grand scheme of things. But she longed now, more than she had let herself do before, for the chance of a different future, and the not-quite-regret gathered, crystalline, around a single thought. Finally, the only way for Marthe to have quietude in her own mind was to release it: a sacrifice to her pride.

"Why did you try to set me up with Katie, if you wanted me yourself?"

Her eyes now would not close, and her gaze lay on the overlapping tones of her body against Oonagh's. Her voice sounded small and distant to her own ears, and it made her wish she had said nothing.

Oonagh sighed and it made her body rise to press warm against Marthe's arm. She raised a hand and ran it through her hair, staring at the ceiling. "I never know what _you_ want, Marthe. And I knew Katie could handle a no. Me, though...?"

Her voice was husky, draped with lingering sleep, and the emotion that lay exposed in her words made Marthe squeeze her eyes shut again.

Marthe's answering laugh came too quick, too thin and nervous to be convincing of the confidence she intended to project. She swore softly and rolled her forehead into Oonagh's neck, clutched her body close, fingers tucking beneath her side, her blonde hair falling in tickling tracework across Oonagh's chest. Marthe's shoulder rose to shield her face, and she nestled with her eyes screwed shut against the pulse in Oonagh's throat. Quietly, she spoke into its rhythm:

" _The sands have run out against us_

_we were rewarded by journeys_

_into desire_

_into mornings alone_

_where excuse and endurance mingle_

_conceiving decision_."

Oonagh let her eyes linger on the high ceiling and encircled Marthe with her free arm. The protectiveness of poetry was a thing she recognised as well as the locked box in which she kept her own regrets. Observing the vessel's familiar dull sheen, its sharp, delineated edges and time-worn dents, Oonagh allowed herself to think in a vague way of the horrors of the ashram and what had come afterwards in Las Vegas. "The time wasn't there," said Oonagh.

Marthe's reply simmered with barely held anger. "The time wasn't _ours_." In her mind there was nothing vague about the last moment she had seen the thin grey body of Georges Gaultier, and the memory made her shudder and sit up, tearing herself free of Oonagh's hold.

Her hair fell in clinging golden tangles, and the sudden movement released the smell of smoke again. Marthe swallowed and felt out the knots in her hair with raking fingers.

"I need a shower," she announced.

Oonagh said nothing. Her touch was a sympathetic smile on Marthe's shoulders, trailing down her spine. She swung herself out of the bed and retrieved a towel from an unsealed cardboard box.

Marthe took it and made her way to the bathroom. One end of the blue tub had been walled off with thick glass blocks, a shower installed above the bath to save space in the small room. Marthe climbed in and fumbled with the taps, letting out a screech when a jet of cold water plummeted down onto her back and neck.

Mingling with the running water was Oonagh's delighted laugh. She stood beside the bathtub, her arms folded, shaking her head at Marthe's expression.

Even as her skin prickled from the shock of cold, the water that poured through Marthe's hair and over her shoulder was growing warm now, heat building alongside the heat in her belly as she looked down into Oonagh's sparkling green eyes.

"There's a trick to it.” Oonagh grinned. "But it's warm now?"

Marthe took the frustration she had woken with and banished it with the force of want. Time would march on, inevitable, but she was going to keep this morning for herself, and no one could stop her from doing so. She stepped back under the flow of the shower, water wearing a runnel down the furrow of her back. "Why don't you come and find out?" Marthe held her hands to the side and raised her face into the stream of water, letting it pour over old make-up and down her aching neck, double falls from her collarbones meeting in a v that ran down her sternum and belly.

Oonagh climbed up and approached through the veil of spray. Close to Marthe, her fingers interlaced in hers, Oonagh laughed as the shower splashed her face and head, applying a filter of new texture that flattened curls and matted eyelashes.

Kisses that tasted of sweet, soft water and a blurring of touch between hands and skin, curves moulded by river and stream, heat outstripping what the boiler could manage and slippery, unwieldy limbs entwined: regrets were forgotten all over again and both were just glad to have uncovered the other, to have this moment together.

Afterwards, her damp hair stained dark and coiled over one bare shoulder, Marthe was more thoroughly enveloped in Oonagh's presence and her scent than ever. She lay on the disordered bedsheets, sprawled with her shoulders half-propped against the headboard. Her bare legs stretched out across the surface of the sheets and the morning sun caught their fine blonde hairs and made Marthe's skin glitter. Against the white valley of her breastbone she cradled a full mug of black coffee, its heat bringing a blush to the surrounding skin. Her eyes were closed, her face washed clear of make-up to show the way the sun had left its bronze mark on her high cheeks and nose. Her eyelashes were the colour of Baltic amber and a single ovoid mole punctuated the skin of her forehead, just above her left brow.

Oonagh stood in the doorway in a light dressing gown, sipping from her own mug and admiring the sight.

She was trying to pretend ignorance of this scrutiny, but Marthe ultimately lost the war with the smile on her lips. "What?" she chuckled, raising her coffee to drink, her eyes still shut.

Oonagh shook her head in exasperation at the other woman's sixth sense. "Just enjoying the view." She returned to her side of the bed and slipped her cold feet beneath the sheets, marvelling at Marthe's immunity to the chill morning air.

Marthe opened her blue eyes and turned her head, and there was a softness in her features that was still so new to Oonagh. One hand reached out and Marthe ran the back of her knuckles down the tight skin between Oonagh's breasts, trailing down her body to highlight the low V of the loosely tied dressing gown.

"What next?" Marthe murmured.

Scrutinising her over her coffee, Oonagh considered the best response. "We fly in two weeks. I'll finish packing. Phelim will help get the furniture out - " She broke off at Marthe's raised brows, her hand stilled mid-gesture against the inside curve of Oonagh's breast.

"I said he could help with this.” She eyed Marthe with a knowing gleam in her jade eyes. "He's wanted to do something ever since I came back here."

"So I recall.” Marthe's voice was flat. She remembered the disdain she had felt when Oonagh had phoned, and in between peals of laughter told her that Phelim O'Liamroe had, yet again, offered to marry her and help conceal her shame at being a single mother, should she want.

"He's harmless.” Oonagh shook her head. "A pretentious gobshite, but at least he recognises that nowadays."

Marthe shrugged and drank her coffee. "I can probably lift more than O’Liamroe; the man's barely bigger than his own Theremin."

"And then I'd get nothing else done watching you flex your muscles, would I?" Oonagh laid a kiss tasting of roasted caramel on her mouth and Marthe, exasperated at herself, felt her chest flush with heat.

There was no more talk of the lives waiting for them outside the apartment. They drank their coffee and chatted easily about nothing at all that would force them to look directly at the forthcoming separation.

Marthe barely remembered the moment when it came, so determined was she not to feel it, not to dwell on the distance stretching its maw wide across her future. She blinked and found herself standing on a wide Dublin pavement with tears in her eyes and no sunglasses in her pockets. She was beyond sight of the corner on which Oonagh's building stood, a parade of skinny linden trees dividing the road like a screen curtain, and the sun over the eastern side of the street shone on Marthe like a spotlight.

Her hands felt empty and she shivered in the dewy morning air. Oonagh had kissed her on the threshold, her hands in her hair, fingers working up the buttons of Marthe's jacket and tying the belt snugly around her waist. She had not asked Marthe to visit, had not demanded that she call, or suggested giving up the dead-end marriage Oonagh did not understand and moving to the other side of the planet for something that might have offered more. But in the lingering, slow pressure of her tongue against Marthe's, in the sweeping gestures of her thumbs over Marthe's cheeks, she had said that all options were open and would remain so. She was in no hurry, and she would not hurry Marthe.

The thought of a retirement in the foothills of the Torlesse Range left Marthe curiously breathless. Her legs were tired, she imagined she felt like a veteran returning from war, looking up a scrubby rise of land to the wooden building where her life had been waiting, poised in the breeze, cardigan and long black hair flying, a future beyond the one she had planned, a choice made for herself alone.

She laughed and threw her head back to the periwinkle sky, sniffing back the silly tears of self-pity. "Dumbass!" Marthe castigated herself.

She wrapped her arms around her body and strode on with purpose down streets too bare even for litter to gather. What a night. What a snivelling, grasping way to respond to _that_. She grinned at the recollections of touch and laughter and had shrugged off the lingering fingertips of _what if_ by the time she reached the hotel. The thought of the husband who she had left in the double room did not even intrude until she approached the concierge, intending to pay the bill.

The mini-bar contents were enumerated - that she had expected. A single pint of Guinness in the cellar bar - that she had no answer to. She flashed a frown at the concierge, who blinked diplomatically at a chandelier as she signed off the invoice.

Marthe took the joint account credit card back with a philosophical shrug of her own. Jerott must have found somewhere to go after that pint or returned to the desk to ask for a spare key. She was hardly in a position to complain if it had been the former; and maybe, she thought, it would do him some good if he had not returned to the room himself. Fell him from his high horse, extract that stick from his ass, at the very least give him something in common with her.

She turned from the desk and headed up to the room. She felt refreshed, her lips curving in her own private smirk, and Marthe had no regrets to be buried and no apologies to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marthe is quoting from Audre Lorde because you know she would: [Movement Song](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42581/movement-song).
> 
> The Peter Gabriel album is 'So', which features the song Marthe sings ([Don't Give Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjEq-r2agqc)).


	2. So fierce the transports are they wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jerott Blyth is too drunk to be around Francis Crawford - he chooses not to attend the house party where he might run into him. Instead, he finds himself in a hotel bar, lonely, _pissed_ and wanting...something. Luckily, there's a handsome stranger willing to buy him drinks - Jerott might even learn something about himself.

_Pleasures invade both eye and ear,_ _  
_ _So fierce the transports are, they wound,_ _  
_ _And all my senses feasted are,_ _  
_ _Tho’ yet the treat is only sound,_ _  
_ _Sure I must perish by your charms,_ _  
_ _Unless you save me in your arms._

\--

The hotel door slammed shut.

In turn, Jerott slammed the mini-bar shut, but that made a far less satisfying sound. He popped the lid off a bottle of beer using the opener affixed to the wall and cursed when it somehow missed the bin below. "Fuck."

He bent to pick it up and dropped it. "Fuck her."

Having successfully retrieved it, he tried to drop it directly into the bin and managed to miss again. "Fuck it."

He sat down heavily on the bed, swung his legs up and drank heavily, thumbing through the hotel TV channels. He was already heavy-limbed and his mind was sluggish with booze. He'd started on the ferry over from Liverpool and when they'd arrived, well, he couldn't say he'd been to Dublin if he'd never had a drink in Temple Bar. His wife had gone to the National Gallery instead.

Still, Jerott had been back at the hotel in plenty of time to get ready. And he had been ready long before Marthe, who showered, spent an age drying her hair, and then arranged her clothes, jewellery and even make-up with more care than he'd ever seen. "You don't need to do that, you look beautiful anyway," he had objected, working his way through the contents of the mini-bar as he waited.

Then, before he knew it, it was Marthe waiting for him as he finished his beer: asking why he needed to finish it, why he'd even needed to start it. And she proceeded to answer her own questions as she stood by the door, that beautiful face cold and mocking, telling him it was no wonder he hadn't been offered work on whatever Francis Crawford's next project was.

This was how Jerott came to be alone in a Dublin hotel room, running down the mini-bar and staring dumbly at the TV. Anyway, he told himself, she would only have made it a nightmare for him if he'd gone with her. And he'd have got angry, and Francis would have noticed how drunk he was, and Jerott would have seen Francis's disappointment, clear as his own, through whatever he'd had to drink.

This way was better. Maybe Francis would ask after him, saving his derision for whatever excuse Marthe made. Maybe he would miss Jerott instead.

Jerott wasn't yet uninhibited enough to unlock the restricted channels offered by the hotel. He'd never found the right combination of alcohol and loneliness for that. Instead, clicking through the seemingly endless options, he settled on a film - largely because a glimpse of naked flesh caught his eye before he scrolled past the channel. He bit the inside of his lip and mulled it over, guilt and a growing dislike of himself in dialogue with the writhing heat in his abdomen. He shifted his hips on the bed and drank to wash away the grubby feeling of jealousy; drank to keep his hands occupied.

Kathleen Turner's black-lined eyes blinked slowly, her blonde hair shimmered in the dark. She asked William Hunt about sin in the back seat of her Mercedes.

Jerott drank, holding the remote poised, pointing at the screen as though he were about to move on - any moment now. The scene changed but the couple didn't. Hands tensed, flexed, grasped sweat-darkened white sheets. He felt empty to the point of nausea.

Thinking that it proved something about self-control - his cool disinterest - he finished his beer and switched off the film mid-way through the sex scene.

The fridge was empty. He could call up room service, but he looked around the room and felt self-conscious, even with the TV screen crackling with static as it powered down. The room had been sullied. By Marthe or by his own thoughts, he didn't know. He put a hand in the small pocket of his smart trousers and shifted the fabric with an uneasy grunt, wishing the material wasn't so damnably tight.

She'd taken the room key - of course she had.

Fuck it.

He turned the handle, switched the light off and walked out, letting the door slam locked after him.

Jerott shambled down the corridor, his shoes dragging on the heavy carpet, his shoulders hunched and expression a grimace against the bright spotlights lining the hall. He took the stairs, clutching the handrail to stop the floor shifting about him, and kept going until there were no more stairs. At last, he found himself in a more comfortable climate: a cool cellar wrapped in the orange glow of uplighting. Ahead of him stone arches seemed to criss-cross back and forth like an Escher drawing, their heights shrouded in cobwebs of blue smoke.

He followed shining terracotta tiles past alcoves in which a few businessmen and well-to-do couples murmured together. The smell of cigar smoke and expensive perfume snatched at him as he glanced at their suspicious faces, and it made him square his shoulders. He ran one hand through his black hair, smoothed the emerald velour of his turtleneck, and approached the sparkling array of glassware and the friendly glow of the bar.

With sober charm, summoned through sheer force of will, Jerott smiled at the bartender and gave his room number. She was short and curvy, the shape of her body accentuated by the black waistcoat of her uniform, and the peachy colour of her pale skin was rich in contrast with the pristine white of her blouse. Despite the professionalism in her voice, Jerott was gratified to note her round cheeks grow pink in response to his grin.

Moments later a crisp pint of Guinness was laid before him, and Jerott turned to survey what he could see of the cellar. It wasn't busy, and there were no sultry women in low-cut tops looking to make a deal. He took a sip of the heavy beer and reflected that this was probably for the best; he wasn't feeling sharp or clever enough for that kind of thing. There was just that emptiness still, the restlessness with which he'd shifted on the bedcovers, the unextinguished heat and impatience for something to happen. He decided to stay at the bar - maybe the young woman who'd served him could be persuaded to talk. She had a sweet smile.

He levered himself onto a wooden stool and fiddled with the shallow pool of condensation under his pint, circling his glass in it and then idly drawing patterns with his finger. The bartender kept herself busy at the other end of the counter.

He hadn't even managed to catch her eye again, and his beer was half finished by the time Jerott was mildly vexed by the arrival of a man on the stool next to his. All the space in the bar, and some guy had to come and sit there at his elbow?

Leather creaked as the newcomer settled onto his perch. His jacket was a thick charcoal-coloured wool, but the material on his knees glistened: snake-skin effect trousers. He had amber-blonde hair in a simple crop-cut, streaked and smoothed back against his skull with gel. "Hi," he said, with a lilting accent and the disconcerting continental confidence Jerott had forgotten he'd once possessed himself.

He nodded warily over his Guinness.

"I'll have one of those, please!" The man pointed to Jerott's drink and spoke with a breezy, sing-song voice. The barmaid smiled brightly and Jerott scowled at his competitor.

He was tanned in the way the rich were, but it was a natural covering rather than the eerie smoothness of make-up. His eyes were hazel and his jaw was very sharp, and Jerott leaned away a little to take this in.

Nevertheless, he shook the proffered hand.

"Peder."

"Jerott," he mumbled the syllables and Peder leaned closer, a hand cupped to his ear. Jerott repeated his name, leaning further away in turn, and making sure to emphasise the Scottish pronunciation. The other man nodded. He made the expected comment about thinking it had been a French name, and Jerott gave his customary introduction to his family history before turning, already bored, back to his drink.

The other man chatted happily to the barmaid and - much to Jerott's chagrin - she giggled as she answered his questions about the city, and agreed with his admiring assessments. He was expressive and charismatic when talking to her, his hands in motion, his leather trousers interjecting constantly as he bobbed on the stool. Jerott pretended to ignore this showy spectacle, guzzling his pint with the intention of taking a second one away to one of the booths.

While he was occupied with draining the final mouthful of creamy froth at the bottom of the glass, he found he wasn't even given the opportunity to do order his own replacement.

"Hey, could you get another for my friend here, too?" Peder's hand tapped the bar by Jerott's elbow and he leaned toward the barmaid with a perfect, white-toothed grin. "Jerott," he said with impeccable enunciation and a confirmatory glance.

"Thanks," Jerott muttered, thinking viciously: _I'm not your fucking friend_.

With the air full of smoke and the alcohol sitting heavy in his mouth, he dropped a hand to the tight pockets of his trousers and mentally cursed when he remembered he'd left his cigarettes on the desk in the room.

The stranger, Peder, wasn't even looking at him but seemed to sense the movement. He drew a packet of Karelia slims from inside his jacket, followed by a silver lighter decorated in swirling interlace pattern. He slid both, trustingly, across the bar.

Proud, but not so proud that he would look a gift horse in the mouth, Jerott helped himself to one of the expensive brand and lit it up, running his thumb admiringly over the lighter.

"Nice case," he admitted.

Peder took it back and lit himself a smoke too, flashing a smirk around the filter. "It's Danish. An ancient design," he held it up and tilted it so the light glittered on its swirls. His tone was almost mocking though, and it made Jerott grin despite himself.

"Oh? 1970s is it?"

The answering laugh was surprised, short and gratified.

Jerott accepted the drink that had been ordered for him and blew a drift of smoke over its head. "Cheers," Peder said, and forced him to maintain eye-contact as he raised his glass.

Jerott noted the mercurial greenness in his eyes, the brown freckles on cheekbones and forehead, blurred by the natural tan. Accompanied by the friendly creases Peder's smile produced, Jerott decided it must have been a ski tan. His accent was Scandinavian, like the lighter, though Jerott didn't know enough about the nuances to say which country precisely the man hailed from.

The barmaid slid an ashtray over to them and both Peder and Jerott gave her sultry smiles through the haze of cigarette smoke. She blinked rapidly and beat a hasty retreat, returning to the preparation of citrus fruit for mixer drinks no one seemed to be ordering.

Jerott watched her back, the curls of strawberry hair at the nape of her neck. He thought about the little tab of material for tightening the back of the waistcoat. He thought about it as a handle with which to pull her close, thought about how her short, soft body would feel in his arms - utterly different to Marthe's.

Married for just over a year to a woman who seemed to have regretted her decision as soon as the ring was on her fine finger, he had lost the thread of hope that had sustained the relationship at first. But he had never strayed, and did not think he would ever go through with the opportunity to do so, even though the idea of it, the possibility, seemed to follow him everywhere.

"Are you in Dublin for long?" Peder intruded on his fantasies.

Jerott tried to withhold his inclination to glare, reminding himself that Peder had provided him with both his drink and his smoke. "Not really, no."

"Me neither," he shrugged. "Still, nice to get away from the wife!"

Jerott's control over his expression lapsed, and he gave the man a withering, disgusted look. He raised his cigarette to his lips in his left hand, displaying the gold band on his finger. Not that he had any inclination to discuss any aspect of his married life with a stranger - whatever their relationship was, he still respected Marthe too much to do that. Or perhaps he feared how such a conversation would reflect on him.

Peder was unruffled. He chuckled and caught his smiling lower lip under white teeth. "Sorry. I don't actually have a wife - it just seems like the kind of thing guys at bars are always talking about."

Weird as this statement was, it put Jerott more at ease than the previous one had done. "What brings you to Dublin?" he asked grudgingly, resigned to the fact that the Scandinavian wanted to talk.

Peder prattled on about his shopping and his sightseeing, and Jerott listened with a patient interest mapped onto his features. His eyelids were heavy with alcohol, his cheeks reddened by the heat of his thick turtleneck, and he continued to smoke for as long as Peder would provide him with cigarettes - endlessly, it seemed. It became a challenge, one borne initially out of spite, to listen to this stranger talk about his day, when Jerott had never persuaded Marthe to share even a fraction of such detail with him.

Still, in defiance of his intentions, Jerott's laughter was genuine. The Scandinavian had such a gleeful way of describing the things that he'd seen. He turned out to be a marketing manager in a Danish multinational, and Jerott saw how naturally sales came to him. Everything was a pitch, he had to have the undivided attention of his audience, whether it was the barmaid when she listened to instructions on how to make a cocktail for him, or whether it was Jerott, who found himself strangely self-conscious in describing his own vocation.

Peder treated even that with awe: "You're in a band? Wait, you played with Lymond? Oh my god! Miss, miss, _frøken_ , get my friend another drink, what do you want Jerott, choose anything!"

Peder laughed in delight and grabbed Jerott's forearm, shaking it where it lay on the bar. "Look at him, he's confused! You have too much choice. _Frøken_ , what do you recommend a rock star should drink?"

By now, Jerott was too thoroughly drunk to notice the wonder with which the barmaid looked at him. He let himself catch Peder's infectious amusement and turned to him, waving the offer away with protests even as his left arm vied with Peder's right arm, each trying to be the one to grab the other in friendly, brotherly affection. A rather tall crystal tumbler of bourbon made its way to the bar in front of him nonetheless, and Jerott grinned as he raised it to his lips, certain now that the warmth he felt was from the admiring eyes of those nearby and nothing at all to do with the alcohol or the velour.

It was only when confronted with his reflection in the icy-bright bathroom that Jerott remembered to have misgivings. He glanced up and met his own eyes as he washed his hands: beneath eloquent brows his long black lashes framed a guarded expression. He thought his skin looked dry, dusted with weary lines and shadows, but his cheeks were still painted with bright, hot colour. There was an incautious elation to it that made him pause.

He dipped his face into tap water pooled in his palms, hoping to wash away the sense of nagging absence the booze couldn't fill. That was it: he was doing what he had always done, he was falling into the orbit of someone else's charisma. Another charming blond man who had a way with words. After all, Jerott's infatuations had worked out so well before.

It was a line of thought that made him angry when he realised how quickly he had gone from skepticism to a wide-eyed adoration and a need to please. Yet again he had been so ready to bestow his attention and company on a shyster: a hawker of the cult of his own personality, a drain on Jerott's thin reserves of emotional currency.

He glared at himself, his eyelashes now spiked with damp, his hair pushed back from his dark forehead. "Get it together Blyth," he hissed.

He dried his hands and face and returned to the bar. He still had some drink left, so he would go back and finish it, but after that, he resolved, he was done for the night.

Peder had finally got the barmaid talking. She was relating her plans to go travelling in India, and, with a shy glance, brought Jerott back into the conversation. He gave a precis of his own experience - omitting Koregaon Park, the meditations and lectures, the dark rooms where people only pretended to pretend violence, and of course, the ever-present guidance of Gabriel. True, that left little of his travels beyond platitudes about the food, the landscape, the trains and rickshaws, but that was all she wanted. She leaned on the bar, her chin propped on one hand, and listened to Jerott as Jerott had listened to Peder: rapt, enthralled.

On that satisfying note, Jerott drained his glass and made to go, avoiding Peder's eyes.

"No, it's early! Have one more," Peder begged.

The barmaid had topped up his glass of bourbon and she held the neck of the bottle aloft over Jerott's. He wavered, looking into her pale blue eyes, and as he did so another customer drew her attention. She put the vessel down and hurried to attend to the other woman, while Peder leaned over the counter-top to retrieve the bottle and, without asking, poured a measure into Jerott's glass.

"Come on," he indicated the empty stool with a flick of his head. The certainty of it made Jerott's heart leap with anger. He stared, disbelieving, at Peder's sparkling eyes, smug with the knowledge that Jerott would just come as called.

"What is it you want?" He walked back to the stool but did not sit down.

Peder swilled his drink thoughtfully. "Like, in life?"

Jerott inclined his head and picked up his own glass. "From me. Now."

The hazel eyes widened guilelessly. "I'm just not ready to call it quits on my last night in Dublin! While there's good cheer and fine company - I was going to teach you a Danish drinking song..."

He took a deep breath and swayed a little on his chair before declaiming in a surprising baritone:

" _Vi skåler med vore venner,  
og dem som vi kender,  
og dem som vi ikke kender,  
dem skåler vi med!  
SKÅL_!"

Peder raised his glass with enthusiasm, but he didn't spill a drop of drink. His slicked back hair was coming loose with his expressive manner though, and a few coppery tendrils fell across his brow.

Jerott let out a sound of mirth. "That's it?"

Peder's brows raised. He grinned his catching grin again and shrugged. "Sure, or what else should I want? Free tickets to a gig? For you to write a song about me? You think I'm some groupie?"

Tired, slow with the heavy stout he'd been drinking, his lips sticky with sweet bourbon, Jerott clambered back into the bar stool and retrieved his replenished glass. He tossed his head back and gazed at Peder through lowered lashes. It was a relief, he decided, not to have to leave as he had planned. Peder was all right really. He couldn't be like Gabriel - he was too open with his sense of humour for that. Too giving of himself. And he wasn't like Lymond. He didn't make Jerott feel that strange, desperate inadequacy around him, didn't always seem to be on the cusp of wounding with his words or distancing himself abruptly.

"I don't write the songs." Jerott said.

The square shoulders of Peder's wool jacket moved as he shrugged again. "No need to - be like Clapton. He's best when he sticks to guitar."

Jerott's brows and lips twitched as he half-hid his words behind his glass. "You can say that again, he's a racist tosser."

"So you are better than Clapton then!" Peder smiled and encouraged Jerott to meet his eyes and meet his glass in another toast.

In their conversation now there was almost an air of contrition in Peder's interest. He asked about Jerott's thoughts on music and songwriting, stardom and the charts, the new romantics and the rise of synth. None of the topics seemed to be areas he had opinions on himself, but, strangely, he was content to listen to a drunk stranger hold forth on the tragedy of the Fairlight's fall from fashion.

Jerott, who had been drinking for well over twelve hours, had no idea what he believed of the words he spoke anymore. Topics that he was usually certain of seemed to slither from his grasp, trains of thought lay derailed and lopsided in the weeds of distraction. He broke off mid-sentence, struck by Peder's look of blank astonishment, and burst into peals of laughter.

"I'm sorry! Sorry man - you didn't know what you were letting yourself in for!" He dropped a friendly hand to one of Peder's knees as he bent over with the apparent hilarity of it. The snake-skin leather of Peder's trousers cut instantly through the mist of booze though and Jerott snatched his hand back and sat up, wiping away traces of mirth at his eyes.

Bemused, Peder shook his head. "It's ok - I got to tell you all about marketing strategies and USPs earlier."

Jerott blinked and licked bourbon from his lips, his gaze unfocused. "Did you? I think I've forgotten already." Something about Peder's accent stuck in his head, like a good riff or a nagging bassline: the little lisp on his esses, the extended way he pronounced the 'a' in marketing. Jerott fidgeted, uncomfortable in his seat and his tight trousers.

He looked up furtively, suspecting he'd made a fool of himself, but Peder's smile was as sweet and encouraging as it had been all evening. It made Jerott feel weary and - he didn't know why - sad. With a sigh, he rubbed his palm against his face.

"What time is it?"

Peder didn't wear a watch either. He twisted to get the attention of the barmaid or another customer and Jerott stared at the muscles at the back of his head. Perfect form, curving from beneath the neatly shorn nape of his neck. His haircut was recent, the amber stubble at its base even and regular, glittering like there was gold dust caught in it. At its edges his tan was not so deep, leaving pale smudges of skin peeking through.

He turned back. "It's thirty...past twelve?"

Jerott blinked. "Yeah," his voice had retreated somewhere inside him, hoarse and tremulous. "I should really get back to my room."

This time, Peder did not attempt to dissuade him. He held out his hand again and Jerott took it. Among the wishes for safe travels, the gratitude for the evening, smiles and the touch of warm skin on his palm, Peder passed Jerott a last cigarette - "for the road" - and Jerott let the other man light it for him. Finally Jerott scrawled an approximation of his signature on a serviette for the barmaid and ambled from the cellar bar, loneliness wrapped up snugly in a layer of booze and the already fading pleasure of easy company.

He walked up the stairs in a daze, smoking thoughtfully as he went. He didn't know what it was, but he wanted. He walked, wanting, staring at the patterned carpet passing by his heavy feet. He thought about what he had left behind in the bar, wanting, wondering why it hadn't been possible to stay any longer. He remembered earlier, Marthe, the film, Marthe again and always, and all the while wanting, until he realised he'd walked up an extra flight of steps and had to turn around to descend to his floor.

Jerott made it all the way to the door of their room, still in a reverie, before he recalled that he didn't have a key.

"Fucks sake," he stubbed his smoke out on the sole of one shoe, leaning unsteadily against the door jamb. Tucking the used butt behind his ear, he knocked gently at first.

Marthe must have been back by now. He knocked harder, feeling the thick wood ring against his knuckles. "Marthe?" He put his mouth next to the seal where the door met the jamb; he dropped to peer at the Yale lock, through which he doubted sound would travel. But he tried, and hammered the surface harder, using his knuckles, then the side of his fist, then the flat of his palm, and finally kicking at the barrier with one foot, launching himself backwards with a futile, flailing series of steps. Down the corridor, another door opened slightly and then shut again discreetly.

Jerott stared at the glossy white surface, imagining his wife standing just the other side of it, listening to his blows fall and deciding not to do anything about it. Maybe he could get a spare key from the concierge. Maybe they could ring up the room and tell Marthe to open the door.

As soon as he'd thought it, Jerott recoiled from the idea - unless she had really slept through the racket he'd made, that would mean admitting that his wife had locked him out deliberately. That would mean explaining far more about the state of his marriage than he was prepared to do.

He gave the door a final, open-palmed slap and rattled the handle angrily.

Still no response. Jerott walked away, supposing he'd find a chair in the lobby or sneak back into the bar after closing to lie down in one of the booths.

He was halfway to the ground floor, staring at his own feet, when he rounded a turn in the bannister and found himself face to face with Peder.

The Dane, arrested in his progress a couple of steps below the landing, looked up at Jerott with an unassuming grin. He tucked back the loose strands of his hair somewhat sheepishly while Jerott blinked down at him.

"Sorry, I'm..." Jerott frowned. "Locked out," _shit_ , he hadn't meant to say that.

Peder was all concern. "Oh no, did you lose your key?"

Jerott stared at him, wide-eyed, like an animal anticipating a collision with a car. "No. Yes. I don't have it."

"There was no one at the desk right now. But I'm sure they'll be back soon." Peder studied Jerott's expression, trying to work out where the sense of ruffled panic was coming from, what it was that could be done to help. "Or, you know, my room has a sofa - and," he held up a hand that had been hanging hidden behind his leg. "Good whiskey," the source of his sheepishness was a bottle of Red Breast he had bought whole from the bar.

Jerott reeled, one hand gripping the bannister still. "You don't want to waste good whiskey on me right now."

Peder shrugged. "Why not? I may as well open it - it's not like it'll taste any better if it's just lying forgotten at the back of my cupboard."

He looked down at the bottle and Jerott looked down at his honey-coloured lashes, the stipple of freckles across the ridge of bone beneath his eye-sockets and across the fine bridge of his nose. He was about to refuse, but Peder grinned and turned him by the arm as he proceeded upstairs again. "Come on, I'm not drinking it on my own."

Jerott followed him through the door to his room and let out a snort at the piles and piles of bags on the floor and furniture. The sofa was nearly invisible beneath them. "You weren't kidding about the shopping earlier," he observed astutely.

Peder waved a hand. "It's really cheap! And I've got a lot of family who want stuff." He threw off his jacket, dropping it so it covered a clutch of paper bags marked with the names of art galleries. Without the jacket, his white shirt was revealed to follow fashionable lines: it had wide shoulders but was darted around the waist, its big collar rumpled by the hasty removal of the outer layer of clothing.

Jerott didn't hide his curiosity about the purchases while Peder took two crystal glasses from the shelf by the mini-bar and began to unpeel the foil covering on the bottle. Jerott peered in bags and grinned at the display of tat and taste: another person's choices all neatly packaged, demonstrating the same scattergun enthusiasm that Peder had in person.

Then, Jerott saw something that really caught his eye, and he removed it gently from its bag, unable to resist the allure of cherry red plastic.

Peder turned at the sound of the paper rustling and scoffed. "You can't play that! It's a toy."

His guest willfully ignored the warning and looked around for somewhere to sit. Jerott flumped on the edge of the bed, hooking one leg over the other and trying to work out how to cradle the child-sized electric guitar he'd discovered. The head read 'Washburn G-Junior' and the body was bolder in colour than any of the Fenders Jerott had seen even Lymond play. He turned the tuning pins and plucked at the strings, smiling to himself at the fingering adjustments necessitated by the small instrument.

"I got that for my niece," Peder explained, but Jerott's attention was lost to the tinny voice of the guitar's strings. One leg reached the floor, his foot on tip-toes as it propped his other leg up, his ankle over his knee and the guitar balanced absurdly on one thigh. Black hair hung about his face, and he flicked it back reflexively when it interfered with his vision. Satisfied, at last, that the thing was tuned as well as it could be, he caressed it with the fingers and thumb of his right hand, letting his body choose what to play while his mind remained filled up with drink.

It was an old song that came to his hands, an overlooked folk ballad that he'd taught himself in the early seventies. He hummed along with the rhythm, putting some firmness into the movement of his fingers to draw volume from the strings.

" _Time has told me, you're a rare, rare find._.." he sang softly to the guitar.

Peder watched, enraptured, two empty glasses in his hands. He approached Jerott to get a better view of the way his hands moved, clever and toned, to get a clearer picture of the peaceful expression on his face, his eyes nearly closed in bliss.

In an interlude between lyrics, Jerott looked up at him, and a slow smile spread across his lips in response to Peder's astonished, flushed face. "You can barely stand up and you can do that?" Peder gestured with one empty glass as Jerott played, his body and head swaying a little with the music, keeping the discipline of timing in his shoulders and arms.

Jerott just grinned and continued to play and sing, and Peder did not like to interrupt again, fearful that a spell would be broken if the song ended early - as though all that was holding Jerott together at that moment was the fragile sound of the unplugged guitar.

When it ended, he spoke with attempted levity, but his voice seemed battered and shaken by a tide of feeling: "You should be in a band, man." He turned back to the counter where he'd left the whiskey and hastened to pour out the drink as Jerott chuckled at the joke.

Behind him, Jerott shuffled back against the plush headboard of the bed, letting his right leg lift from the floor, his left still crossed over to keep his shoe off the chintzy covers. He fiddled idly with the guitar, testing scales and arpeggios against the alcohol-impaired responses of his fingers.

It was only when Peder tossed a packet of cigarettes and lighter onto the bed next to him that Jerott's eyes left the instrument. He fumbled a smoke free and lit it one-handed, the other holding the red guitar across his lounging body.

Peder bent to pull off his shoes and then brought the drinks over, handing one across to Jerott before stretching out on the opposite side of the double bed. Jerott offered him one of his own cigarettes and they both laughed as their fingers bumped, competing to hand the filter over to Peder's mouth. Jerott lit it and watched the reflection of flame in Peder's changeable eyes.

A veil of lacy smoke swirled between them and Jerott laid the guitar aside, unnerved by a knot of hunger that was knitting his insides into convoluted new patterns. Peder looked up at him through the smoke, his expression mutable, serious with a patient, plaintive request that he would not articulate.

"Skull?" Jerott offered, raising his glass, holding onto the eye-contact with more bravado than he felt.

The request in Peder's eyes was submerged by instant delight and he laughed his easy laugh. " _Skål_ ," he corrected.

Their knuckles bumped instead of the glasses and Jerott giggled too, and prepared to take a numbing mouthful of the liquor.

As he did, Peder touched him again, his fingers gently slowing the movement of Jerott's hand as he raised his drink to his lips. "Wait, you can't drink it like that! I told you, it's good whiskey," Peder chuckled.

Jerott blinked dumbly for a moment and looked at the touch. He mustered an unsteady smile. "And I told you it would be wasted on me..."

"Not really, just relax. Be gentle with it," Peder shifted his fingers to the back of Jerott's hand, applying the slightest pressure to guide the glass up again. He watched Jerott's mouth as the glass met his lips, his hand tilting Jerott's hand carefully, allowing a sip of burning golden liquid to lap at his tongue before ushering him to lower the vessel again.

The Red Breast warmed all it touched, sparking and reinvigorating Jerott even on who knew what hour of the day's session. In the wake of the music, cushioned on duvet and pillows, he was as lonely and uninhibited as he had ever been, and Peder's tanned, freckled face regarded him with such open wonder that he forgot to be afraid of himself.

Jerott shifted on the covers, leaving his feet hanging off the edge of the bed as he leaned over to touch a speculative kiss on the other man's mouth. His eyes were screwed shut, his leg shook uncomfortably, but this wasn't the fear that had always prevented him before. It was a different thing, tender and hopeful, eager and willing.

Peder's lips moved in a smile below his, and Jerott was surprised at how soft they were - like a woman's, but if his mouth strayed it met the sandpaper of unshaven skin. He opened his eyes momentarily, confirming Peder's own closed eyes and the happy creases around them. Jerott pressed kisses against him, and Peder made a muffled, gratifying sound of pleasure.

Apart, Jerott gasped, shocked by himself. His face roared with heat and his body sung out the answer to the question he had been asking all evening. He rearranged his drink and cigarette in his hands, bringing the latter to his lips with shaking fingers.

Peder, with an expression of satisfaction on his face, reached over behind him to pluck an ashtray from the bedside table. In it, he caught the wobbling tip of Jerott's cigarette as it fell and watched him roguishly. "See? Not wasted on you at all," he murmured.

Jerott tried to find calm in the smooth, thick feeling of smoke in his lungs, but it seemed to do nothing for him now. Peder was propped on one elbow, sipping from his drink coquettishly, his cigarette coiling a blue signal from where he'd set it in the ashtray. After a particularly deep drag, Jerott lay his down too, and beckoned Peder's grinning face closer, reaching behind his jaw to the strong lines of muscle he'd admired earlier. Again Jerott kissed him, letting himself go deeper this time, his smoky tongue mingling with the fresh whiskey lining Peder's mouth.

Peder's glass languished in the hand against the bed, and he slipped his free fingers into the thick mass of Jerott's hair, combing his scalp, his thumb stroking the ridges of Jerott's ear and jaw.

The good whiskey and the ashtray were moved to the bedside. Jerott dug his toes into his heels and pushed his shoes off with raw determination. He rolled onto the bed and wrapped Peder's rich-smelling body in his arms, their mouths only parting enough for laughter and sighs of relief to tumble free. With Jerott above him, Peder's hair had lost all pretense to neatness, and it splayed in amber-coloured spikes around his head and over his forehead. Jerott buried his face in the space between the other man's collar and his neck and breathed in the scent of him, nipping and kissing at tendons and collarbone.

Peder groaned and chuckled, reluctantly taking Jerott's face in his hands to hold him back. "You are so drunk," he said sweetly, the smile still in his eyes. "You are so drunk, you don't know what you're doing."

Hurt was a shadow on Jerott's face. "I've got a pretty good idea..." Peder bit his lip, grinning, and he shook his head - not what he'd meant.

"Ok," Jerott conceded. "Yes. I'm pretty drunk. But, but that doesn't mean. I mean. You're still. I want. I still want you."

Peder blinked at this disarming speech and struggled briefly against Jerott's affections as he resumed kissing his throat, his hands untucking Peder's shirt and exploring the skin of his flanks. Finally, he proved his point by pushing the other man back, pressure against his chest deflecting Jerott until it was him who lay with his black locks sprawled against the covers, and Peder above him: his hair and shirt crazed and crumpled, his skin pink-blotched and his chest rising with quick breaths.

"God," Peder caught his breath, his hand on the green velour of Jerott's top, gently holding him down. "Look at you."

"Please," Jerott let the word fall out with the last of his shame.

"And what about me? Think you're in a fit state to show me a good time, huh?" Peder laughed between breaths, his smile broad and indulgent.

It was only a joke, a silly off-hand comment as he made up his mind, but it caused Jerott's face to crumple in the second before he hid it. He flinched and placed his hands over his expression.

"Oh Christ, love's always a transaction," he uttered into his palms.

Concern drifted over Peder's features and he took Jerott's wrists, parting these new gates and nuzzling his ear and neck with apologetic kisses. "Oh. Oh, shh. Who said anything about love? You musicians, so melodramatic."

Jerott's Adam's apple moved beneath Peder's lips as he gulped down a wave of terror and sudden doubt, but the gentleness of touch was already making him forget what had caused such worry. Jerott sat up to let the other man gather folds of his velour top and pour it up over his body, casting aside its over-warm armour so that Jerott felt newly chilled against the embroidered covers.

Peder put his hands everywhere, fingers knotting greedily in the dark curls covering Jerott's chest, shivering soft, stroking and smoothing the straighter hairs on his abdomen, drawing a line to his bellybutton and below - lifting away and leaving agony before settling anew on the tors of his pelvis, making whirlpools around sensitive brown nipples. His kisses were taut, insistent, every touch a carefully calculated message aimed at driving Jerott to ecstasy.

Jerott's body arched to be close to Peder's, he forgot to be perturbed by squeaking leather, and he gripped handfuls of muscular thighs and arse. When Peder sat up, his hair a calamity of sweaty plumage, his mouth red and eyes dazzling in their brightness, Jerott held his breath. The tormented white shirt came off, one button at a time, revealing skin like clotted cream dusted all over by splashes of freckles and wisps of golden hair. The skiier's tan ended at his wrists and Jerott grasped one arm and kissed the change in gradient, laughing with his teeth against Peder's pulse.

Divested of his shirt, the other man hooked a set of fingers into the waistband of Jerott's trousers, pausing to meet his wide, dark eyes in a deep breath of silence.

"You say stop. Anytime. Anytime you need to," his free hand help up a finger instructively and Jerott moaned and pushed his hips off the bed, feeling the fingers at his belt line slide along sensitive skin. Peder grinned. "Ok! That was not a 'stop'."

He undid the fastenings of the uncomfortable dress trousers while Jerott watched. There was no thought in his mind other than the begging, desperate whine that insisted Peder continue. A porous want, willing to be soaked through by any loving touch, saturated by attention that said, in believable, uncomplicated terms: you are good and I want to be here.

His trousers went; his underwear was gone. Peder's mouth was everywhere his hands had been, while his hand now reached into the heat between Jerott's legs, massaging skin and raising the pitch of his gasps. Jerott swore in every language he knew; a prayer directed anywhere and everywhere.

Then it was Peder's mouth, hot and tightening, accompanied by the clever movement of his tongue. Jerott stared wide-eyed at the stucco on the ceiling, waves of alcohol and sensation buffeting him, a delerious, confused levitation on currents he couldn't predict, lapping at him from all sides. His fists grasped folds of the chintzy bedcover and he strained to raise his head, to see Peder's cheeks thin and hollow, his lips glistening pink.

Peder looked up, his eyes the colour of a forest floor, moss and old oak, and Jerott felt pierced, seen in all his ridiculous, frail vulnerability. He cried out but couldn't hear his own voice, only felt the impact of noise against his throat, the rawness inside his chest. Peder's hands were on his hips, pushing him into the duvet even as his body bucked upwards.

"Fuckfuckfuck," Jerott's body writhed, seeking mercy and finding none was to be had. Peder watched him with a gleeful spark in his eye, flexing his lips and pressing his tongue hard against him. That was it, it was enough, and Jerott threw his hips up in one final burst of surrender, letting Peder's mouth draw all the energy from him, all the want draining from his reserves, all the day's aching, miserable void.

Sweat blossomed amongst the hairs on his body, beading between follicles, seeping from skin suffused with heat and liquid longing. Jerott's fists uncurled slowly, his head lolled against the duvet, and Peder sat up, moving to lie beside him and sweeping Jerott's sticky hair from his forehead and cheek.

"You are beautiful," he murmured, his fingertips toying with Jerott's hair, his eyes red-rimmed and filled with awe. He turned to the side table, relit his cigarette and took a careful sip of his whiskey.

Jerott blinked up at him rapidly, noticing the dryness in his mouth and the swirling, light feeling in his head and stomach. Peder reached over, his two fingers extended, and dropped the cigarette into Jerott's parted lips. He passed him the other whiskey and Jerott held it balanced on his stomach, puffing on the cigarette with his eyes not quite closed: the same almost-bliss as when he'd played the guitar, Peder thought.

Before he fell asleep, Jerott finished his whiskey at a sedate pace, sitting up next to Peder, both of them below the covers. Jerott ran his hand over Peder's bare chest and belly, picking out the features that made the Dane giggle breathily, pretending to count the freckles, kissing him again and again, making a peaty Islay blend of the Greek cigarettes and the Irish whiskey. He went for the fastenings of the leather trousers once, but Peder caught his wrist.

"This isn't a transaction," he told Jerott, his grip pleasingly tight on Jerott's wandering hand.

They curled together one way and then the other, Peder's leather trousers squeaking and creaking, Jerott's alcohol-numbed mind reaching desperately for sleep even as he clung to the tenderness of the other man, to the unadorned promise of affection without demand. Caught finally in an embrace from which he never wanted to stir, Jerott let his heavy eyelids fall shut, his mouth compelled to tilt in an enduring smirk. Peder nuzzled his hair and neck, lavishing unnecessary kisses on sweaty hair and stubbled cheeks, and Jerott might even have fallen asleep while still quietly laughing at his luck.

He woke in a very different mood: cautious and lost, confused and guilty. Adrift in a huge bed, bare skin touching a body still half-encased in leather, and all covered in the smell of rich, sweet tobacco smoke and sharp cologne - Jerott's limbs trembled, his forehead thundered with pain, and he felt dirty from his scalp to his toes. His thoughts flinched from the previous night and he did not want to open his eyes and admit what he had done, or to see where his useless longing had swept him and stranded him.

In a darkness imposed by heavy curtains, his mouth and mind grown thick with the lint of alcohol and tar, Jerott slipped like a shadow from the bed, not looking back, his heart a drumroll in his chest as he searched around the floor for his clothes. He knocked the Washburn with a foot that had never had the patience to escape its sock, and the guitar struck a hushed note of greeting. Jerott picked it up delicately and laid it on the warm bed where he had been asleep. Nausea rose inside him when he saw the lines of another man's body so close: Peder's bone structure highlighted by a persistent blue glow from the window area, the range of brow, cheekbones, nose and jaw capped with defining light.

Jerott turned hastily from the sleeping face of the man whose kisses had covered his body, who had left him feeling grubby and stained. Jerott pulled his uncomfortable trousers on, slipped into his velour turtleneck, and forced his feet into his battered shoes.

He stopped at the door, noticing the glitter of eyes in the darkness. Peder probably couldn't see his expression - Jerott couldn't see his. But he forgot about the light that would come in from the corridor when he opened the door, and for a moment Jerott's horror was illuminated, thin-lipped regret and apology. The dread of a man who suspected he might have been just one more item of shopping laid out on hotel furniture. In the ribbon of light that fell across the covers, Peder's expression was, by contrast, peaceful - he was at ease with himself, and simply chose to see that a part of Jerott longed to stay.

Jerott fled into the bright corridor, one hand hurrying to his mouth, the muscles of his back and stomach tightening. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, wrestling control of himself. He imagined that the alcohol from the night before wanted to surface like hot lava, welling in his core. He just had to get back to the room first. Marthe wouldn't leave without him, and her questions would wait until his numbed brain had figured out what response he could give.

With even less steadiness than the previous night, Jerott wove a path down the corridor and up to his floor. He noted that the door of their room was open, with a cleaning cart outside, and he made his alcohol-ravaged body jog to ensure he got there before the cleaner had finished. He smiled ruefully and pretended to replace a key in his pocket - "It's mine, it's ok if I come in?" he asked.

The cleaner squinted at him over the sound of the vacuum cleaner and shrugged. Jerott pulled off his shoes, perched on the bed and grinned awkwardly until she had finished and closed the door afterwards. As he waited, he let the feeling of sickness lap at him like a waves on a shore, coming and going with ominous portent, but never quite rearing up to engulf him.

Silence reigned at last. Jerott hurled his shoes with fury at the wall and hissed a curse.

Marthe had not, in fact, been back. The bed had not needed to be remade; her clothes were still in the cupboard and her make-up scattered where she had left it. He might have simply obtained a spare key from the concierge and had a peaceful, long night's sleep. Standing by the bed, furious that Marthe had, somehow, made the night with Peder into something Jerott had actively chosen, not a thing he could tell himself had been foisted on him, he thought about other rock and roll acts of destruction he might perform. The teacups and crystal glasses quailed beneath his glare, but, after a moment inhaling the smell of Peder on his top, Jerott granted them a reprieve. He knew then that it wasn't the film that had sullied the room, nor Marthe. It had been him, the whole time.

Slumped with exhaustion he made his way into the ensuite. Fully-clothed, he stepped into the shower and turned he tap on full.

The water was too cold and then too hot. He gritted his teeth and endured it as it made his trousers cling uncomfortably to his thighs, made his turtleneck sag heavily, made his hair fall straight and smooth against his scalp. He let tendrils of hair and water drop over his eyes and heard Peder's voice in his head: "You are beautiful."

Jerott grasped the shower fitting with his hands and bowed his head, letting the water form its channels and runnels against his skin, working below his soaking clothes, washing away all the smell and touch of the previous night.

He didn't hear the door open; didn't notice anyone until the toilet flushed and he looked up and saw Marthe washing her hands at the basin, still dressed for Oonagh's party, still grimly disappointed with him.

Why, then, did his heart leap at the sight of her?

"I missed you," he said over the sound of the water.

Marthe looked at his sodden clothes, her mouth a bent line of disgust. "And do you suppose this is the final scene in a movie? It looks like you found ways to occupy yourself nonetheless."

Moments later, a towel round his waist, the wet clothes he'd shed still in the bottom of the shower, Jerott followed her into the bedroom. "Where were you? Are you ok? Did something happen?"

She was stuffing things into her duffel bag and paused only to raise her eyebrows. She didn't even look at him. "I'm fine - I stayed with Oonagh. It was late and I didn't want to walk in the dark."

Jerott had to accept it, she wasn't going to elaborate. He left his ruined clothes in the bathroom and put on fresh items, but whichever way he turned he felt like Peder's scent still lingered somewhere: he was spiced with guilt, he felt like an occupier in his own body, could not figure out the paths that lay between what he had seemingly wanted so badly last night and the revulsion that daytime brought.

To Marthe, he just seemed extraordinarily hungover. She had paid the bill and knew at least one drink had been put on their tab from the bar, but where he'd taken himself off to after that she neither knew nor cared. She was too preoccupied with her own sense of loss. Unlike her husband she wanted to hold fast to the memories of the previous night, to keep herself enveloped in the smells and the laughter and the way she felt at peace with herself when Oonagh smiled and ran her hand over Marthe's skin.

In silence, they packed and left, Jerott grimacing behind a large pair of Carrera shades, Marthe squinting beneath the visor of a college baseball cap. They returned the key and waited for the car to be brought round.

In a hotel lobby bright with summer sun, Jerott watched porters carry paper bags back and forth to another vehicle outside. There was seemingly endless stream of them, and the rhythm of rotating doors and feet gliding across marble made Jerott nauseous again. At the sight of a small red guitar poking from the top of one of the bags he stifled a cough and fumbled to light up a cigarette, his attention suddenly ostentatiously on anything but the porters.

Marthe flipped through a copy of Irish Tatler with a look of amused superiority on her face and took no notice of Jerott's restlessness. As the valet approached with their car key, she granted him one bored gesture of reprieve: "If you're gonna barf, go and do it now." But he just picked up the duffel bag and trailed after her, head low, shoulders hunched, wary of any voices he might recognise speaking in lilting, friendly tones to the concierge.

Marthe wound down the window with a curse when he got in beside her. "Do you have to do that in the car," she sighed about the cigarette but didn't even bother making the question anything other than rhetorical.

Jerott wound his own window down and leaned his left elbow on the doorframe, staring out as Marthe started the engine and they pulled away.

Dublin was Sunday morning peaceful. The Georgian buildings cast deep, sharp-angled shadows on broad pavements, but the sun drummed a path in between, making green-leafed trees glow and showing the dust and grot and seasalt that was plastered to the windscreen of Marthe's car. The only people to be seen walked alone: short-trousered boys with terriers on string leads, searching the pavements for treasure, or black-clothed young men with purposeful strides and shifty glances, and black-clothed old men sitting sprawled against building-sides, enjoying the sun.

The ferry port at Dún Laoghaire was busy by comparison. Foreigners without Mass to attend gathered in snaking lines of vehicles, queuing up for checks and more checks. Engine fumes and the slick scent of oil filled the air and made Jerott swallow nervously between gulps of cigarette smoke. Despite herself, Marthe allowed that she was impressed by the way he was holding on to some semblance of control.

Whatever he had gotten up to, she hadn't seen him this bad for a long time: he'd not had the coordination to shave and his pallid cheeks were covered in dark shadow. His fingers still shook as his body reacted to the self-inflicted poisoning, and he'd not even tried to needle her about where she'd been. It was liable to be an uncomfortable crossing for him, calm conditions or not. But Marthe had grown to find a certain comfort in the way Jerott doubled down on his own bad decisions. She couldn't like it, exactly, or find it admirable, but the constancy of it - the reluctance to complain when he knew full well he had caused his own suffering - was a feature she had come to find reassuring in its familiarity.

The palaver of boarding took place in its own time, in its thickening fug of exhaust fumes and questions. Bags, boots, bonnets, undercarriage to be checked; passports to be handed over, terms of forced familiarity to be endured.

"Thank you, Mrs Blyth. You and your husband can go on through now."

They parked where they were told, in the bowels of the ship behind the louring backsides of lorries. With the engine off, Jerott nearly fell from the car in his hurry to escape the deck. "I'll see you in the lounge," he forced out, already around the car and making for the stairs.

Marthe paused to sigh and arrange her cap in the mirror. She gathered up her purse and handbag and ran a hand wistfully down her own neck. The memory of Oonagh's touch made her close her eyes and lean her head back against the seat, the feeling so fresh in her mind but already not enough, not as potent as the real thing. It seemed so unfair, to have had to leave Oonagh this morning when she would still be in the same hemisphere for a whole week. Marthe knew she had to let her go, but why couldn't they have had their time together first?

It was no good wishing things were other than they were though, and Marthe felt sickened at having indulged herself in such silly fantasies. She left the car and slammed the door, storming up to the deck in a mood only marginally less foul than Jerott's.

He wasn't in the lounge. She found him outside, leaning on the railings and staring at the sea.

"Here," she handed him a mug of black coffee and watched him swallow drily, contemplating whether or not his stomach could handle it yet.

He took it anyway and held it between his hands, elbows on the white rails. Marthe was always surprised at how short his fingers looked, stubby and unprepossessing, despite the wonders they worked on guitar strings.

"Thanks," he watched her watching him, waiting to see if she would stay or go back inside.

Marthe leaned on the chipped and rusty metal beside him, mirroring his pose at a discreet distance. She sipped from her own mug of peppermint tea and scoured the grey horizon for any trace of the warm companionship she had sometimes felt around him. If it was there now, it was as confused as the meeting of blue sky and blue sea, smudged and indistinct and shifting from view the longer she looked for it.

"Francis didn't come," she said, as gently as she could.

Jerott raised the coffee to his mouth and grunted acknowledgement of the information. "He's busy with his research still."

"Apparently so."

"And how did Oonagh feel about that?"

Marthe's jaw tightened and her knuckles paled in their grip on her mug. "Oh. You know. Mad on Cai's behalf. But it's always something of a relief when he doesn't show, isn't it?"

The ferry began to move, chugging as it shifted the brown harbour water out of its way. The wind lifted Jerott's black hair and Marthe saw him close his eyes behind the sunglasses, figuring out precisely what flavour of regret he was feeling.

"Who was there then?"

Marthe told him and managed to raise a moment's interest: "I'd have liked to have seen Salablanca. And Archie."

The boat gathered pace as they finished their drinks and Marthe shivered at the touch of the wind.

When the breeze caught just right and her chin angled down to the lapel of her thin jacket, she could smell rosemary and citrus. The waxy smell of dark red lipstick she'd scrubbed from her face and neck; the sense of the other woman's body seemed as close as though Oonagh had been wearing Marthe's own clothes.

"Do you want to go inside?" Jerott had pushed his sunglasses back. The coffee had smoothed the edges of weariness from his handsome face, and his brown eyes were warm with concern despite the shadows beneath them.

Marthe folded her arms, her empty mug hanging from a forefinger. He made no move to come closer, but he did not look away from her stare either. Finally, she decided that any contact had to be better than the ghost of touch all over her skin, and she dipped her head and proffered a shoulder, leaning in his direction.

With a sigh of deep contentment Jerott enfolded her in his arms, his chest to her back, his hands crossed over her so he could stroke her biceps with his thumbs. He let his head bow to nuzzle the side of her face and neck with his rough jaw and buried his forehead against her skin.

Marthe bristled under the containment at first, but his hold asked nothing more than to keep her warm, and she let her shoulders fall, let herself lean back against him, her own jawline against his thick dark hair.

"I love you," he said, no hope to it, just a statement of fact. A reminder.

Marthe was too tired to correct him. He regretted his night and she didn't. She regretted the marriage and he didn't. She turned her head closer and pecked a kiss on his head.

"I know. I know," she murmured and covered his hand with her own, conciliatory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The film in the hotel room is _Body Heat_ (1981), ['a neo noir erotic thriller'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Heat) which I have never seen.
> 
> Peder isn't based on anyone in particular (probably an amalgam of Danes I've met). He's singing a traditional Danish drinking song, which translates to: 'we say cheers with our friends, with the people we know, with the people we don't know, we say cheers with them - cheers!'
> 
> Also please believe that when I wrote this I had completely forgotten about Jerott's obsession with Marthe's tanned skin in the tekke - I might not have written this in the same way if I'd remembered that, but on the other hand, I can certainly say I was channelling canon characterisation. After a fashion.
> 
> Jerott's singing [Time Has Told Me by Nick Drake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cche-h83qNQ) which probably sounds absurd on [one of these](https://reverb.com/ca/item/1027427-1980-s-washburn-g-junior-v-electric-guitar-red), unplugged, but hey, he's making it work :')


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